The Martin Agency Wins 3 More Accounts Without a Pitch

After The Martin Agency's new business machine roared to life in 2020, winning accounts like Axe, Old Navy, Twisted Tea and Century 21, the agency spent 2021 delivering its first work for those brands. On the new business front, the pipeline was cooler, but in 2022, the agency once again is making noise, largely without pitching. Adweek's reigning back-to-back U.S. Agency of the Year made headlines last month with its win of Bud Light Seltzer, but the agency has also snagged a number of accounts without a pitch, including project work for Google Creators, AOR relationships with LegalShield and Royal Caribbean, lead agency for Santander and more work on Hasbro brands. "When we have a lot of cost savings, we can do a lot of other things with that money, which is nice because for agencies, there's not always a lot of slack in the funding," Cavallo told Adweek. From July 2021 until June 2022, Royal Caribbean spent $195 million on measured media, LegalShield spent $40 million and Santander U.S. spent $10 million, according to the latest data from COMvergence. The Martin Agency Is Adweek’s 2021 US Agency of the Year Ditch the pitch While Bud Light Seltzer came via a quick three-month pitch in which The Martin Agency competed with Anomaly and Johannes Leonardo in the final round, the majority of the agency's growth has come thanks to prior relationships with brand leaders. While serving as MullenLowe's chief strategy and growth officer in 2015, Cavallo previously worked with Royal Caribbean when the agency won the account. LegalShield CMO Cara Whitley previously served as CMO of Century 21, where she also worked with Cavallo while she was at MullenLowe. Less than a year after Whitley moved to LegalShield, she went back to Cavallo with her business. Rexanna Mccubbin, the Santander US svp, head of brand, creative and content marketing, formerly worked at The Martin Agency and helped usher in that new relationship for the agency. "[Santander] really fit with our ambition because they are one of the few female-led financial institutions in the world," Cavallo said.The agency also begun working with Google without needing to pitch the business in a traditional sense. Cavallo said the extent of the commitment to win those accounts tended to be one meeting to discuss Martin's strategic thoughts and point of view on the business, as well as getting the leadership teams together. Altogether, it's the second best year for growth in the agency's history. "We do, as an agency, prioritize new business relationships and finding the right kinds of people that we want to build our agency with," Cavallo said. The IPG shop doesn't have a huge new business team. Cavallo is heavily involved in the process with Taylor Grimes, svp, head of business development, and Courtney Jones, vp, business development and growth director. "The culture that Kristen and the entire team are building at Martin is amazing. I had a past history of working with them and truly value the excitement and enthusiasm they bring to their clients which shines through in their work," said Whitely. "They’re creatively disrupting the industry and doing it unapologetically." Staffing up The Martin Agency has rapidly increased its head count to be able to staff to its accounts. Overall, the agency is up from about 400 employees at the end of 2021 to nearly 475 employees—or about 20% more. "We decided that we would be continuously hiring and that we would hire ahead of where we needed to be so that we were always feeling like we were not burning out our staff," Cavallo said, who admitted the strategy was a risk. In addition to its space in Richmond, Va., The Martin Agency is looking westward to Los Angeles as a place where employees can "congregate" if the shop can lock in a physical location. Cavallo said that the agency plans to hire more talent in California as well. "It feels like the more we move towards content creation, the more reasonable it is that we would want to have a space there," Cavallo said. The agency recently hired Alex Campbell from The Mill to run SuperJoy, The Martin Agency's in-house production team. The Martin Agency CEO Kristen Cavallo Explains Why She’s Heavily Involved With Her Clients

Accounts

The Martin Agency Wins 3 More Accounts—All Without a Pitch

The IPG shop nabs Royal Caribbean, Santander and LegalShield

Jameson Fleming

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Jameson Fleming