Clan of the Caveman

Unlike many of his counterparts, however, Hughes is no autocrat. "Mike Hughes is one of the few creative directors I've ever met who will really listen to you," says senior vice president and creative director Danny Robinson, who left Manhattan and Vigilante, the ad firm he founded, to come to Richmond. "He's brilliant, but he has no need to be the guy in the front."

Once Hughes had pulled through a course of chemotherapy and radiation in early 2004, he thought about retiring. Yet after taking a hard look at where he and his business stood, he decided to go back to work--but with a new mission: to transform brands, not just to build them.

"Historically, we don't do well as incrementalists," says Hughes's comrade-in-arms, John Adams, Martin's patrician CEO (and a distant relation to that other John Adams). "All of the clients who have shown up over the past couple of years seem to appreciate that we have a very strong sense of ambition for them."

Under their new self-imposed mandate, the two had to evaluate every prospective account in terms of the aggressiveness of its agenda. But it also meant finding a way to amplify the company's creative power. As Hughes studied Martin's past performance, he saw that its best efforts often emerged from smaller, more-entrepreneurial groups that were closer to the ground. So in July 2004, he decided to back off, to devolve power to the teams below him. He restructured his creative department, hiring 8 new players and naming 11 people to creative-director posts--a move that was radical in an industry where one or two alpha dogs usually run the show.

Hughes decided that the new teams would get a chance to work on multiple accounts, parachuting in where they were needed, or where they simply had a good idea to offer. By freeing each team to showcase its ideas in a more individual, immediate fashion, he essentially multiplied the firm's creative voices. "What we're trying to do is let the personality of the people who are creating the work shine through in a way that reflects well on the brands," he says. "So when you're watching the cavemen, for example, you get a feeling for Steve Bassett, the account's creative director, and Joe Lawson, the writer. When Bob Meagher does a spot for GEICO, it's unmistakably got some of Bob in it. And Andy Azula is actually in the UPS commercial. Giving the brands that kind of voice is different than what usually goes on."

It was as if Hughes had transformed Martin into a confederation of mini agencies, rather than a single midsize one.

The power of Hughes's insight became clear only after he began applying it to one of his oldest accounts: GEICO, purveyor of that dullest of commodities, car insurance. Martin had first landed the account more than a decade earlier, when GEICO was morphing from a niche insurer of teachers and civil servants into one pitched directly to customers through an 800-number. By 1996, Warren Buffett had bought the company, and the Internet was beginning to goose its business model. Suddenly, GEICO was awash in marketing cash, with a URL to drive direct sales and a mandate to reach customers across all demographics.

It was the perfect petri dish for breeding a fresh idea and GEICO's now-famous gecko was spawned on the proverbial barroom napkin in 1999. Ted Ward, GEICO's marketing vice president, had been brainstorming with a Martin art director about how to get people to stop mispronouncing the company's name; the gecko debuted in a one-off, 15-second spot, and nobody gave it another thought until the SAG talent strike later that year. "We had to scramble to see what we could do without high-priced talent," Ward says. "Then we thought, 'Let's resurrect the gecko!'"

The little reptile suddenly got hot, and Martin began having fun: During the next few years, the gecko auditioned for the role of GEICO spokescritter (he beat out the Taco Bell Chihuahua), became GEICO's "Employee of the Month" (with his own parking space), and got a girlfriend. Eventually, his accent changed from upper-crust Brit to working-class Cockney. ("It wasn't totally logical," Bassett says. "But people seemed to like it because it didn't feel like it was tested on Madison Avenue.")

But the success of the campaign raised a potential problem: overexposure. In flogging the gecko, the Martin team risked sending viewers screaming for their remotes. Plus, unlike, say, Bud Light or Whoppers, GEICO wanted to reach a broad demographic--from first-time car owners to grannies who loved their State Farm agents. One lizard could take the company only so far.