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Adweek.com
The Martin Agency: U.S. Agency of the Year 2009
Master storytellers mix creative with an aggressive new business strategy
January 25, 2010
by, Eleftheria Parpis
The Pizza Hut win capped off an aggressive new business run for The Martin Agency, Adweek's U.S. Agency of the Year,...In addition to Pizza Hut, the Interpublic Group agency won Expedia, Sun Life Financial, the United States Tennis Association, Microsoft retail, ChapStick, 1-800 Contacts and Manpower. While continuing to turn out work that lent heart to Walmart's money-saving strategy, laughs for Geico, memorable musical numbers for Freecreditreport.com and a minute-by-minute digital re-creation of the 1969 Apollo moon landing for the JFK Presidential Library and Museum and AOL, Martin's creative prowess also attracted projects from ProFlowers, Moen and Rosetta Stone.
The agency's new business strategy was aggressive (last year). Out of 70 invitations to client reviews, 18 were pursued and 14 secured. Attention-grabbing campaigns for long-standing clients like Geico and UPS have long been the agency's calling card, but in 2009, it had lots to do "with our history with value brands in a recession and, more fundamentally, our ability to connect to a part of America," says CEO John Adams.
Instead of fracturing a culture centered on the belief that building an agency is about building a community, not a company, Walmart helped Martin prove that its accessible brand of creativity not only produces pop culture hits like the Geico gecko and the perpetually misunderstood cavemen, but emotive retail advertising that pushes personality as much as price. It's a message that in difficult economic times resonates well beyond retail.
Warm, ego-less, smart and strategic are adjectives clients often use to describe the agency, and subsequently, Mike Hughes, the president and co-chief creative officer. "Chemistry is [an] important ingredient in their winning formula," says Brian Niccol, CMO of Pizza Hut. "The Martin team meshed perfectly with our own. They get our audience, mirror our culture and have the right thinking to market our products."
Clients point to the value of their results-driven creative, their data analytics capability and, just as often, their heart. "Right on down from John Adams to the individual people who work on the account, they believe passionately in what they are doing," says Stephen Quinn, CMO of Walmart. "Friendship is really important to them too. They feel like real partners."
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1.25.2010
