byline: Katherine Schulte

The new leadership of The Martin Agency, a nationally prominent Richmond-based ad agency that counts GEICO and UPS among its clients, isn’t so new.

Danny Robinson, who has been with the 400-person agency for 20 years and served as chief creative officer for the last three, succeeded Kristen Cavallo as Martin’s CEO this year, but he took some convincing to accept the role, he says.

“I had to really reflect on what it was I was taking on,” Robinson says. “I wanted to make sure when I said yes that I was ready to do it, because I care too much about this place and the people here to take over something and to not do a great job.”

Two days after the Jan. 30 announcement of Robinson’s ascension to CEO, Martin’s parent company, Interpublic Group of Cos., announced that Jerry Hoak, an executive creative director at Martin, would succeed Robinson as chief creative officer. Hoak, who joined Martin in 2016, says he had been preparing in hopes of eventually succeeding Robinson in the firm’s chief creative job.

Martin’s “new” leadership plans to focus inward for now.

“There wasn’t really a need for a transition because we were always part of the building of the agency,” Robinson says. “And then the rest is, well, how is Jerry going to operate differently than I am? And the same for me … but the fundamental should be the same.”

In the wake

Martin has racked up awards and accounts in recent years, righting course after a highly publicized #MeToo scandal in 2017 that saw sexual harassment allegations made against Martin’s former chief creative officer, Joe Alexander. (He has denied the allegations and any wrongdoing.) Cavallo entered as CEO less than two weeks after Alexander left Martin and initially promoted Karen Costello as CCO. When Costello returned to ad agency Deutsch LA in 2020, Cavallo promoted Robinson, who became Martin’s first Black CCO and is now the agency’s first Black CEO.

Martin was named industry publication Adweek’s Agency of the Year in 2020 and 2021, as well as Ad Age’s Agency of the Year in 2023. It’s also stacked up a list of notable clients, like Fortune 500 used car retailer CarMax and Fortune 1000 food delivery platform DoorDash.

“We have a really great story to tell, and we tell it well,” Robinson says. “I think the greatest gift Kristen gave us was helping us with our brand story and our mission, and it really guides everything.”

Although Robinson said on a March episode of NPR’s “Full Disclosure” that he tries to fly under the radar, he’s received industry accolades, including Ad Age’s chief creative officer of the year award in 2022. Ad Age said he “revved up the agency’s creative output, turning out great ideas at a quicker pace across multiple categories and brands.”

Before coming to Martin, Robinson was best known for co-founding ad agency Vigilante, part of Leo Burnett, in 1998. Vigilante orchestrated Oprah Winfrey’s famous 2004 car giveaway.

Robinson joined Martin as a senior vice president and group creative director in 2004 and was promoted to chief client officer in 2019 before becoming chief creative officer.

Hoak joined Martin more recently, after holding art director roles at Ogilvy New York, Taxi and Droga5 New York, where he rose through the ranks. At Martin, he was promoted from group creative director to executive creative director in 2017.

Charting the course

Now at Martin’s helm, Robinson says he has four priorities as CEO: Martin’s Cultural Impact Lab; Martin Entertainment; the agency’s design capability; and new business attraction.

“I believe the goal — my goal, at least — the first year is to double down on those things, to hone them, to make them better, to make sure they’re integrated in the right way, to make sure they’re resourced right and to make them stronger,” Robinson says.

Martin launched its Cultural Impact Lab in 2019. The lab, which started as an earned media team and expanded to include social media and influencer work, has “PR and earned specialists who are super culturally minded,” says Alanna Strauss, executive vice president of Martin Entertainment and the Cultural Impact Lab. The team is “seeing what’s happening, cultural trends, kind of creating theses and stories, and building that into our creative development process.”

Among the focuses she and Robinson have discussed, Strauss says, as subcultures and analytics grow in importance, “the focus with the lab will continue to grow, build and carve out its space within our entire agency process.”

In June 2023, Cavallo recruited Strauss to start Martin Entertainment, which focuses on extending brands into entertainment through partnerships that marry brands with existing intellectual property like TV shows or movies and through new content that brands create. One example of Martin Entertainment’s work is a late 2023 ad campaign pairing GEICO and Netflix to market Netflix’s animated children’s movie “Leo.” In the ad, the GEICO gecko advises the lizard Leo, voiced by Adam Sandler, during film shooting.

Robinson and Strauss plan to create an “entertainment room” program, which would be a full-day workshop developing a customized strategy for an existing or new client’s brand to enter the entertainment world.

“The goal is coming out of it, for brands to understand, ‘Here’s how I want to show up in entertainment, here’s where I want to show up in entertainment, and here are the types of stories I want to tell to hit the audience I want to speak to,’” Strauss says.

Eyes on the horizon

Working on Martin’s design capabilities is important because “design is critical to everything we do,” Hoak says.

Hoak says the agency in recent years began partnering designers with creative directors earlier in the pitch process. “I feel like we’re winning pitches in large part because of design and what we’ve done there,” he says. In an early April LinkedIn post, Hoak credited the change as “a huge reason” Martin won the pitch for a Papa Johns rebrand.

He also believes Martin can grow its creative work and win more industry awards, like the Cannes Lions Awards: “Luckily, we have the staff in place to do so. It’s just a matter of pushing, and we have some great new clients and great old clients that are ready to buy great work, and over the last six years, we’ve been pushing them in the direction to now hit the home runs.” 

Two months after Robinson and Hoak assumed their roles, Robinson appointed a new chief operating and culture officer. Adrienne Wright Cleveland is succeeding Carmina Drummond, who retired after 35 years at Martin. Cleveland joined the agency in February 2023 as managing director heading talent and culture.

For now, Hoak says, Martin isn’t planning to fill his previous role as one of three executive creative directors.

Robinson and Hoak stress that their leadership transition was smooth and that they don’t see a need to change course.

“It really does have a lot to do with … how embedded Jerry and I were,” Robinson says. “We were part of the building of … the agency the past five or six years, … and I think it helps that people in the company know that we were part of it and understand that; they know our intentions, and they’re good.”