Martin Agency, Arts & Letters alums join forces to form new firm

Phil Williams and Marty Ritter (Courtesy Rachel Gierlach)

Two Richmond ad industry veterans are joining forces on a new business.

Marty Ritter and Phil Williams, who’ve spent a combined several decades at some of the city’s biggest agencies, recently launched consulting firm New Best Friend Co. 

The company plans to offer talent strategy, coaching and recruiting for startups and other companies in growth mode. 

Ritter spent 12 years at the Martin Agency in several roles before moving to Arts & Letters in 2019, spending almost six years in her role as director of talent.

Williams spent almost seven years at Martin, and then two years out on the West Coast at Wieden + Kennedy. After that, he returned to the Richmond area and worked seven years at Arts & Letters, around two of those spent as director of recruiting and the last two as director of culture. 

Ritter had hired Williams when he came to Martin years back, and she later joined him at Arts & Letters about six months after he made the change. The two, Ritter told BizSense, have worked closely in their roles at Arts & Letters over the years. 

Wanting a change, Ritter left Arts & Letters last fall and got an executive coaching certification. She said she felt called to create a new business that could mix consulting and coaching for companies looking to grow. 

And not long after Ritter said goodbye to Arts & Letters, Williams did the same. After he left in March in search of something new, Ritter was his first phone call, Williams said.

Williams said over the past few months, the two began to formulate an idea to combine their skills, along with Ritter’s new coaching certification, into something new. 

“Helping other companies build, do the kind of talent practices and things we had done at Arts & Letters, but do that at scale for a lot of different places. And that’s where New Best Friend Co. was born,” Williams said. 

“I can take my senior-level expertise in HR and recruiting and talent development, and give people access to that at a fraction of the cost of what it would be to hire someone at my level,” Ritter added. “And if I partner up with Phil, we can work cross functionally.” 

New Best Friend Co. logo (Courtesy New Best Friend Co.)

The name New Best Friend Co. is meant to evoke the duo’s working style, Williams said, where companies can feel free to explore their unique challenges and ways to solve them with the consultancy. 

“That’s why we named it New Best Friend. That’s what we want it to feel like to work with us,” Williams said. “Just that feeling of finding somebody who understands your business, understands the challenges you have and can be a resource.” 

The two said New Best Friend has identified three pain points they aim to help growing companies resolve. The first is a company that is trying to scale and feels it can’t hire fast enough, the second is a business having trouble retaining employees and the third is making sure growth is responsible and that people are in the right roles. 

“How do you find great people, how do you get the great people that you have who you want to stay, to stay, and how do you generally make sure people know what they need to do and how to get to where they want to get to in terms of their career growth within their organization,” Williams said of what New Best Friend aims to help customers address. 

New Best Friend’s services include taking a look at a company’s hiring process, analyzing things such as a company’s strategy for marketing jobs and its interviewing and onboarding processes. Ritter said New Best Friend can act as a “freelance recruiter” for companies looking to tighten up their processes. 

And as for responsible growth, Ritter said New Best Friend can help teams by expanding employees’ skill set, or coaching people through a business shift or helping managers learn how to work with their teams better. 

Williams said New Best Friend is planning on offering services to customers at a monthly rate, to eliminate complications that come with things like hourly pricing.

The agency has begun soft launching in the past two weeks, as the pair have begun their first meetings with potential clients, Ritter said. 

New Best Friend Co. is just the team of two for now. The company does not have a physical headquarters but could look to find a home in a local coworking space sometime in the future. 

“We’re really excited about working with startups and maybe creative agencies, maybe not, that are building and in that growth mode,” Ritter said. “That’s really daunting, and often people like us who start companies, they’ve never done it before.” 

The post Martin Agency, Arts & Letters alums join forces to form new firm appeared first on Richmond BizSense.