[1] After graduating from Brandeis in 1977, Verdi planned on going to law school and moved back to New York where he progressed through a series of sort-term and unfulfilling jobs.

In 1989 the agency was launched as Ellis Verdi & Partners, as a one-man operation in the living room of his apartment making over 100 cold calls each day.

[4][1] In the fall of 1991, Verdi came under criticism for running a print ad for a discount clothier named Daffy's that showed an image of a Straitjacket with the tagline: "If you're paying over $100 for a dress shirt, may we suggest a jacket to go with it?"

[6] During the first years of the agency, Verdi worked in his home living room and made more than 100 cold calls a day and ended up being hired by the South Street Seaport as well as Solgar Vitamins.

The agency was hired even before the first location opened and Verdi executed the campaign and additional television advertisements over the course of a number of years in support of the launch and the initial wave of stores.

[8] In 1999 Verdi was hired, without any previous political experience,[9] to do the advertising for the Hillary Clinton 2000 United States Senate election for New York.

[3] In 2009, Verdi was behind the Duane Reade series of outdoor, radio, and print advertisements that were inside jokes to fellow New Yorkers and to view the ambiguous drugstores as a hometown favorite.

Or as New Yorkers call it, lunch hour.”[12] In October 2016, Ellis' firm won eleven television and print Hatch Awards for using vintage stock film from old black and white movies with dubbed and updated dialogue to pitch a furniture retailer, Bernie & Phyl's.