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A city of ad ventures
(Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Mar. 9--Richmond has boasted a big name in advertising circles for years.
But the area's reputation is reaching new heights, thanks in part to major changes at Virginia Commonwealth University's Brandcenter and to campaigns from The Martin Agency that have captured national attention.
Bolstering that status are dozens of smaller agencies, including Barber Martin, Siddall Inc. and RightMinds, that are quietly working on national campaigns for such high-profile companies and products as Freddie Mac and Amstel Light.
"It takes one agency to pull a city out of the muck and to get the flywheel turning," said Luke Sullivan, author of "Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads" and senior vice president and group creative director at GSD&M agency in Austin, Texas.
"Richmond is one of the early regional cities that got it," said Sullivan, who worked at The Martin Agency in the early 1980s.
The center of the advertising world is no longer on New York's Madison Avenue or in other major metropolitan areas, said Stuart Elliott, a columnist covering the advertising industry for The New York Times.
The old model where agencies had to be located in a major metropolitan areas "changed with the rise of Martin and similar agencies in Minneapolis, Austin and Miami," Elliott said. "Richmond, you could say, is one of a number of regional centers of excellence," he said.
Gregory Wingfield, president of the Greater Richmond Partnership, the area's economic-development booster group, said having a number of advertising agencies helps expand the region's reputation as a creative metropolis.
"One of the initiatives we have in greater Richmond is to push for the creative class and attract creative businesses," he said.
Having The Martin Agency, the Brandcenter and "the largest concentration of ad agencies between Atlanta and New York helps underscore the critical mass" of talent in the area, Wingfield said.
Chris Thurston, president and chief executive officer of RightMinds, said Richmond is a good town for advertising work. RightMinds, which has about 30 employees, has done work for Amstel Light, Genworth Financial, LandAmerica Financial Group and S&K Menswear.
"The trend is to move away
from Madison Avenue," he said. "For people looking for good work and reasonable lifestyle, Richmond is a Mecca."
About 50 advertising agencies operate in the Richmond area, employing hundreds of workers. The Martin Agency, the area's largest ad shop, has more than 400 workers locally.
In 2006, about 48,000 advertising and public-relations agencies operated in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor.
Until several years ago, Richmond's shining star was The Martin Agency, but in the past several years, the Brandcenter has begun to match it in national celebrity.
In a carriage house once used by The Jefferson Hotel off West Main Street, the Brandcenter is a living classroom for advertising and marketing graduate students at VCU.
In January, the school changed its name from the Adcenter and moved to its new digs.
For an advertising student, "having VCU on your resume is like having Harvard, Yale or Princeton," said Megan Hayes, vice president and associate director of recruiting at Digitas, an international ad agency based in Boston.
For good reason. The Brandcenter's job placement rate is more than 95 percent, VCU said.
The school gets about 250 applicants each year, accepting about half. This year, it will graduate 85 students.
The majority of graduates have gone to New York, Los Angeles, London and Chicago. Only about 4 percent have stayed in Virginia, VCU says.
Most of the students take jobs working on accounts as copywriters, artists, marketing specialists or ad strategists. The median salary for a copywriter with some experience is $48,000, according to Salary.com.
The ones who have stayed in Virginia mostly have accepted jobs with The Martin Agency and Arnold Worldwide, which has offices in McLean, the university said.
Daylynn Fortner personifies the school's reputation.
The 27-year-old graduate of the University of South Florida in Tampa, Fla., came to the Brandcenter in 2005 because of its reputation. After graduation last year, she landed a job as a brand strategist at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, an ad agency in San Francisco.
Fortner said she got the job after an informal visit because of her degree from the Brandcenter and her portfolio.
She started three weeks after school got out.
"I absolutely went in with a leg up," she said. "It's almost as if I was working at an agency for two years."
That type of preparation sets the school apart, advertising executives say.
"The key difference in VCU's Brandcenter education is that it teaches students to understand the customer and they are able to re-create in real life what they've learned," GSD&M's Sullivan said.
For instance, Brandcenter students joined 13 prominent agencies in other cities including TBWA/Chiat Day and Droga5 in creating local campaign to raise money for the United Nation's relief group UNICEF to make clean water more available in underdeveloped countries.
Richmond is the only city to use graduate students, which is a testament to the school, said Rick Boyko, the Brandcenter's managing director.
As the Brandcenter sends students elsewhere, The Martin Agency brings talent here.
The agency, a unit of The Interpublic Group of Cos., expects to reach $1 billion in client billings this year, said John Adams, The Martin Agency's chairman and CEO.
Best known for its GEICO cavemen commercials, the agency has created ads for clients such as BFGoodrich, Hanes, NASCAR and United Parcel Service. It won the $500 million Wal-Mart account last year.
The reason for the success is agency's ability to land clients and then develop creative campaigns, said Jonah Bloom, editor of Advertising Age, an industry magazine that named Martin as the third-best in the country based on prestige and work.
"They've tried some very interesting things, and they tried to do them in different formats," he said. "In a world where people can shut out advertising, they've found out how to be entertaining."
Patrick Meeley moved to The Martin Agency from San Francisco two weeks ago to work on the agency's Wal-Mart account as an account supervisor.
The sense he gets of Richmond "is that you got all the city experience and know-how, tempered with Southern hospitality," said Meeley, who has worked at Deutsch LA and TBWA/Chiat Day, both nationally known agencies in Los Angeles.
The reason staff make the move from larger cities to Richmond is because of the work the agency is doing and the values it instills, said Mike Hughes, The Martin Agency's president and creative director.
"We offer a nice place to work where people can do their best work," he said.
To see more of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesdispatch.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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