Guest Speaker: Earl Cox

Throughout the semester we have been fortunate enough to have a handful of wonderful speakers. Each presentation had been very insightful and I have really enjoyed how different all the speaker’s messages have been. Tomorrow in class we will welcome out last guest speaker for the semester, Earl Cox. Cox is a Virginia Tech alumni and graduated with a degree in communications. He also received his MBA in marketing from University of Virginia. I wonder which school he pulls for when the two teams play each other every year?!

Earl Cox is the Chief Strategy Officer & Partner for The MartinAgency and his main task is to help clients position their strategic directions. The Martin Agency is an advertising agency that is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia and was founded in July 1965. The Martin Agency is one of the nation’s leading agencies; they have consistently been one of top five marketing agencies in the country. They represent many high profile clients such as UPS, Hanes, Comcast, Wal-Mart, GEICO, Pizza Hut and Discover. They are even responsible for creating the famous “Virginia is For Lover’s” campaign, which is still around today.

Most mainstream advertising agencies are located in the city that never sleeps, New York City. It’s commonly implied that if you have made it big and you are the best of the best, then your office is located in the heart of NYC. A strategic issue that I see with the Martin Agency is being able to continually compete as a big name player even though they are located in Richmond, Virginia. They need to make sure they maintain their strong reputation so they are not forgotten about.

Question:

1.       You have worked on many different campaigns, out of all of them, which one has been his favorite and why?