Christy Hiler, president and owner of Cornett, started the “Own It” podcast to share the stories of other female leaders in the advertising industry.
Christy Hiler, president and owner of Cornett, and her team have raised the stature of the Lexington-based advertising agency to national and international recognition. Cornett primarily served the local market when it was founded in 1984 by Kip Cornett. Building on that success, Hiler has brought strong strategic thinking to the agency while expanding its reach and solidifying its purpose.
Hiler has been with Cornett for 20 years. She took over operations as president five years ago and, in December 2020, purchased the agency outright. She is the first Kentuckian to be included in Adweek’s Women’s Trailblazers List. In 2021, Ad Age magazine listed Cornett among its best small agencies, and, for the past two years, the Kentucky Chamber has listed Cornett as one of the Best Places to Work in Kentucky. In 2022, the agency won gold at the National Addy Awards.
Hiler serves on the board of Building Leaders and Creators [BLAC], a program offering internships for advancing Black talent in the advertising industry. She also founded Own It, an initiative to lift more women into advertising leadership. Own It is also the name of Hiler’s podcast, which features interviews with women leaders of the advertising world.
While raising four children with her husband, Whit Hiler, the executive creative director at Cornett, she also finds time for community service. She serves on the boards for Common Good, Lexington Downtown Partnership, and the Blue Grass Community Foundation. Business Lexington spoke with Hiler about change and success happening at Cornett and in the advertising industry.
Please talk about the kind of change you’re looking to bring to the advertising business at large and at Cornett.
Shortly after I bought the agency, I asked, ‘how many other female agency owners are there?’ According to [the American Association of Advertising Agencies], of the 20,000 advertising agencies in the United States, less than 200 are owned by women. That was a disappointment.
I went through a very burdensome process to have Cornett identified and certified as a woman-owned business, so I thought maybe that was the problem — that barrier or cost to get certified as a female-owned business. I built a site to track it more closely. I’m not sure that it’s 100% complete, but the number has not surpassed 250 female agency owners. Women own 40% of all businesses in the U.S., so the fact that women own less than 1% of agencies has to change.
The advertising industry has a reputation for being a boy’s club. I know that it can change, but you have to be intentional. You have to have people who are ready to champion it and push it forward. I love hearing the stories of other female agency owners — their journeys to ownership. I started a podcast [Own It] because I think others will enjoy their stories and want to see more women in the business.
I also feel strongly about having diverse perspectives across the business. We, as an agency, made a commitment that we want to change the way that Cornett looks, how we talk, and how we work to be more representative of our community and world. We’re not the only agency that is looking to change. We’re partnering with other agencies, combining our efforts to train people and move them up quickly into leadership positions. That’s the goal with BLAC. We believe the world misses out on immeasurable creativity when Black talent isn’t seen or heard. We submit our diversity data to an organization, tracking it across all agencies nationally, and it holds us to our commitment.
After all, our job is to connect with all kinds of people emotionally, motivate them and get them to change their behavior. How can we really understand those people and what matters to them if we don’t have diverse perspectives at the table?
How has Cornett grown?
When I started at Cornett, it was more local. Over the years, we have grown an incredible reputation in this market for many reasons. One is that we’ve developed long-standing relationships with some of the leading businesses and brands around here, like the University of Kentucky and Keeneland. We built that out to include A&W restaurants and Tempur-Pedic. There’s no reason an agency in Kentucky can’t compete with any agency, especially given the caliber of our work. We set our sights on continuing to expand.
A few years ago, we started working with some folks at P&G [Proctor & Gamble]. They loved us and introduced us to some other folks, namely Anheuser-Busch. We developed a relationship with Busch Light and started working with them a little over a year ago. We also started working with Gannett Publishing, which has more than 200 publications serving local markets, and we did a big campaign for them this past year. Our most recent win was the national account for Legoland. We work across many industries.
Do you do your own production in-house?
We’re a full-service agency. When I first started in advertising, many agencies were full-service. Then a shift happened, and a lot of brands would have their creative work, media and digital services done by different agencies. It was a specialization model. I think brands are going to return to having that all together. There are a lot of efficiencies in that. It works better when teams work together rather than being siloed.
Our business is based on four pillars: one is brand strategy, another is brand management, there’s brand creative, and finally, connections, which includes all types of media: owned, paid and earned media. More than a year ago, we brought Chris Finnegan in to lead our media team, and he came from one of the best agencies on the media side. As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to attract many talented people.
What Cornett campaigns are you most proud of?
One is A&W’s Three-Ninths burger. That was really fun work that got many earned mentions across news publications. Because the show “Queen’s Gambit” was based here in Lexington, with VisitLex, we did a “Queen’s Gambit”-inspired hotel room at the 21c Museum Hotel. It had chess pieces on the ceiling with throwback decor, and it was beautifully done. It got tons and tons of pickup, and that wasn’t a traditional campaign or even a traditional form of media. And then there’s the “Here for It” campaign for Gannett. That one was launched across three markets to change the narrative and show the value that local journalism brings to communities. In all of our work, the challenges are all different, and that’s what makes it fun and creative.