Mike Hughes

Mike Hughes joined The Martin Agency in 1978, served as creative director for three decades and has been the company’s president since 1995.

Inducted to The One Club Hall of Fame in 2010, Hughes shares the honor with the likes of Bill Bernbach, Leo Burnett and David Ogilvy. That same year, Hughes appeared on the cover of Adweek with his business partner of 35 years, agency chairman John Adams, when The Martin Agency was named Agency of the Year. Hughes was also named to Creativity Magazine’s ‘Creativity 50’ in 2010 alongside Lady Gaga and James Cameron. A member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame, Hughes is one of the Wall Street Journal’s creative leaders and he’s served as the only board chairman of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Brandcenter. The University honored Hughes in 2010 by naming the Brandcenter building “Mike Hughes Hall” and awarding him a Doctor of Humane Letters.

A former director of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and chairman of its creative committee, Hughes has also served on the board of directors for The One Club for Art & Copy in New York. He’s served as judge for the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival and has been a leader in the Advertising Council’s post 9/11 Freedom and Homeland Security Campaigns.

In 2000, the oldest governing body in the Western Hemisphere, the Virginia General Assembly, named Mike Hughes and John Adams the Commonwealth’s Outstanding Industrialists of the Year.

Hughes was born in 1948 in Washington, D.C. He attended Benedictine Catholic Military High School in Richmond, Virginia, and went on to major in English at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, graduating in 1970.

Hughes took his first job as a newspaper reporter at the Richmond News Leader, where he had worked during college. His first job in advertising was with Clinton Frank, Inc., a Chicago-based advertising agency, working on the Reynolds Metals account. Harry Jacobs, the agency’s chairman emeritus and Mike’s mentor, hired Hughes in 1978 as senior vice president and co-creative director of The Martin Agency.

Hughes and his wife of 38 years, Ginny, have two sons, Preston (deceased) and Jason.