Meet Pete Lerma of Richards and Lerma

Today we’d like to introduce you to Pete Lerma.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I landed in Dallas in 1998. I had grown up in Wichita Falls, TX and started my career at an advertising agency there called DesignWorks. The way I explain it to people, the time had come for me to move to the big city, and when you live in Wichita Falls…Dallas is the big city!

The agency that was consistently winning new clients and making news was The Richards Group. So I set out to get their attention by trying something different. I had a friend of mine take a photograph of me standing in front of The Richards Group’s building with my hands held high. I then mocked up a cover of Advertising Age magazine with me on the cover and a headline that read, “Pete Lerma Joins The Richards Group – has the competition scrambling.” Looking back on that, it might have been a little cheesy, but it got me in the door.

I started in the digital practice and after a couple of years I was put in charge and built it into the largest specialized discipline within The Richards Group. So in late 2008, Stan Richards and I sat down and talked about launching a Hispanic division. Stan said to me, “You’ll just have two jobs. You’ll continue to run the digital group while you build this new entity.” I loved the digital group, so that seemed fine to me. We named the new division Richards/Lerma and after a couple of years of building it, I transitioned from leading both companies to dedicating myself 100% to Richards/Lerma.

Since then, we’ve evolved quite a bit. We have 90 team members and offices in Dallas and Mexico City. We’re also not just a Hispanic agency anymore. As the market has evolved and become more multicultural, we’ve taken a lead-agency role with more of our clients. That means we’re doing both general market and Hispanic work on their behalf. From day-one, the way I looked at things, I’d been trained in one of the best agencies in the world to connect brands and their customers. As long as we see that as our reason to exist, we’ll always be relevant.

We’re fortunate enough to work with lots of great clients and their brands, including, Bud Light Chelada, Avocados From Mexico, Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, LALA, MetroPCS and St Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Something that’s really important to us is our culture. When we started Richards/Lerma, we were starting from scratch, so the culture was a bit of a blank slate. I had come from The Richards Group, so I knew what I wanted the culture to be like. But we won lots of business quickly, and we had to staff up in a hurry. And when you have a culture vacuum, it can result in a clash of opinions about what the culture should be. So, at the beginning, it was hard. But I continued to believe that we could develop a great culture, and we did. Today, the culture is self-sustaining. People come here and see exactly who we are and what we care about. We exist to do great work, to take care of our clients and to take care of each other. It’s a very positive, energetic environment. It’s something I’m very proud of.

Richards and Lerma – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
So I’ve said we connect brands and their customers, but more specifically, we’re an advertising agency. We work really hard to uncover unexpected insights about our target audiences. We work to help our clients focus their messaging on the thing they do better than anyone else. And creatively, we find breakthrough ways to tell their stories in a way that will resonate with the customer. We do all of that in television, radio, print and digital.

We talk about ourselves as a Next Generation Agency. Having spent the last 20 years in digital marketing, one of the things I learned was to embrace innovation. It’s something that I’ve brought to Richards/Lerma. And as a result, we were able to earn a reputation as the most digitally savvy Hispanic agency in the country. Now, that reputation has expanded beyond just the U.S. In fact, we were recently recognized as Independent Agency of the Year by FIAP, an organization that looks at work from Spain, Portugal, Latin America and the U.S.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
We exist to do great work.

I’m often asked where I see the agency in 3 to 5 years. My answer is always about the quality of our work. Being independent allows us to define our own measures of success. So if, in 3 years we’re the same size agency, but our work is three times better than it is today, we’ll consider that a great success. It’s that simple. But it’s also that hard. And we consider it an honor to wake up every day and come to work with that objective in mind.

Contact Info:

• Address: 7007 Twin Hills Ave.,
  Suite 300,
  Dallas, TX 75231
• Website: www.richardslerma.com
• Phone: 214-891-4100
• Email: info@richardslerma.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richardslerma/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richardslerma
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/richardslerma
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2540321/
  ttps://www.youtube.com/user/richardslerma

Image Credit:
Stewart Cohen

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