“It Has to Work for the Work”: Why Arts & Letters Prioritises People Over Geography

Someway near the end of our interview, Charles Hodges pulls out a black toy van with a flame decal reminiscent of a 1990s rock tattoo across each of its side doors. Inspired by a Slack emoji created by a colleague, one of these vans is given to employees of Arts & Letters, the agency that he founded in Richmond, Virginia in 2017, on their fifth anniversary with the company. 

“This is like a metaphor for when we talk about what it's like to work here,” he laughs. “Every day you're basically going on a van ride. You're going on a trip. You like what you're listening to and you have a nice cup of coffee for the way. You might be able to choose the destination but you can't choose the road, you can't choose the weather and there could be some obstacles in the way. But you can always choose what it feels like inside.”

2023 was a good year for Arts & Letters. It was the second full year of committing to an operating model it calls ‘Work Together, Anywhere’, a hybrid environment that they believe allows the best people and best teams to excel for clients regardless of location. Incidentally, it was its best ever year in terms of new business with account wins for DICK’S Sporting Goods, HubSpot, ESPN BET, Extended Stay America, and Bed Bath & Beyond.

50% of Arts & Letters’ new hires - more of which we’ll come to later - are based in either New York or Los Angeles, forming what Charles sees as ‘talent hubs’. The agency has announced plans to open a physical space in New York City, which will mark its first expansion of its physical footprint outside of its headquarters in Richmond. That said, while many agencies in the US are now pushing for employees to return to the office, Arts & Letters now has talents in 20 US states. 

What’s more, almost 20% of its hires across 2023 were what Arts & Letters calls ‘A&L Boomerangs’ - folks who left for another opportunity but ultimately decided to return. They promoted 21 ‘Letterheads’, including five creatives to creative director, and six people transitioned to a different discipline as part of its internal ‘Same Faces, New Places’ programme. 47% of 2022-2023 hires are BIPOC. The leadership team also expanded and is now 56% female and 22% BIPOC. All of this, along with the flexibility of Work Together, Anywhere undoubtedly feeds into Arts & Letters being recognised as a ‘Best Place to Work’ for four straight years by Outside Magazine, a list that’s compiled based on employee survey responses. 

For 2024, Charles and the rest of the team at Arts & Letters is continuing along its hybrid journey of Work Together, Anywhere. “At its core, Arts & Letters is a place that builds teams, and tries to empower those teams to solve problems and create ideas,” Charles says. “There's a lot of benefit, community and time design that goes into thinking about what a connected network of talent that can ‘Work Together, Anywhere’ needs. There are different signals of empowerment that allow people to figure out what works best for them, while also still working together to make sure that everything gets done on time. Part of what makes it a little bit hard to define is that we're in the middle of defining it. 

“The truth of the business of ideas is that people don't work with buildings, they work with people. They work inside their minds, outside on a walk, in the spaces that they feel inspired to show up in and work together. In today's world, they really can work together anywhere if they create an environment that allows that to happen. So, it's really so much that the people of Arts & Letters have continued to think that this is an experiment that works well, and they are the ones that are continuing to support each other, and the place is figuring out what they need more of.”

But despite the current success of the model, Charles is mostly keen to stress that he hasn’t unearthed some infallible formula for the perfect creative agency. In fact, on the Arts & Letters Richmond HQ wall, it proudly says, ‘We’ll figure it out.’ A copywriter by trade, who worked at the likes of Wieden+Kennedy, TBWA\Media Arts Lab and Google prior to launching Arts & Letters, a chat with Charles shies away from corporate theory - in fact, he admits to being “just kind of allergic to it”. What’s important is prioritising people, which in turn prioritises great work. Which is what Work Together, Anywhere is all about. 

“Opportunity and optimism define it,” he says. “All of this is underpinned by the notion that it has to work for the work. I think that that's also another huge credit to the people that we have, and the responsibility and the empowerment that they feel to want to make the work the best it can possibly be for our clients and for each other. When it comes to the client side, we are a place that builds teams to help our clients create ideas, and this model allows us to put together the best team. So they really find it refreshing that variety, and diversity of disciplines, experiences and perspectives can be put together. It's great to have people think really about the problem at hand, rather than the timezone.”

Over the course of 2023 and in early 2024, Arts & Letters made a series of statement hires. Recently, Mike Behrends, a creative director on Arby’s at Fallon for seven years, joined. Alex Ross, one of the aforementioned boomerangs, was hired as a recruiting director from Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. Lisa Setten, head of production, was at MullenLowe US for almost eight years. Tim Hubbell, a former client, joined as director of development. Ralph Paone, who worked at Goodby Silverstein & Partners for 13 years, joined the strategy department. There are more we could list, though a graphic of all new hires can be seen below.

“That amazing group of people,” is something Charles feels immense pride about gathering in one place. “Something I hear again and again, from people during the past three years is that this place feels like they have a chance to build something different, which they can shape. And not only make great work with great people be a part of building something that truly is different.

“The level of the invitation that we're getting is also emblematic of something that might not be as overt from the outside looking in. But it’s so true and it really ties everyone here together: we all love to learn. We love being around people that have done it in a different way and have a different approach. There's so much real interest in a different perspective, which all comes back to that notion of a team; what will this group of people unlock? Rather than, can everything always fit into a certain way? That's really messy. And it really requires a certain amount of ability to hold a lot of different things in your head at once. 

“But those are the things that everyone that loves working here and the clients that love working with us have in common. It's a really resilient, realistically optimistic group of people that like to learn and discover something together, rather than have that one thing in their head and that's the way it is. That's credit to everyone that has joined over the years and shaped that as the culture.”