Leeann Leahy, CEO of VIA, has spent 13 years running an agency that lives inside the old Baxter Building on Congress Street in Portland, Maine — a stone library from 1888 that CCO Matt O’Rourke says has been called the Hogwarts of Advertising. “It doesn’t disappoint,” he adds.
Founded in 1993 by a process engineer, VIA built its reputation on untangling the kind of strategic knots that make other shops flinch. That engineering DNA runs through work for Welch’s, Klondike, L.L.Bean, Arm & Hammer, Golden Corral and Big Y, and it earned the agency two WARC Awards for lasting effectiveness — two of only three handed out in North America that year, by Leahy’s count.
Now employee-owned and 33 years in, VIA has sharpened the story. “We’re not here to decorate the world,” Leahy says. “We’re here to move it.”
How a process engineer’s shop ended up in an 1888 library
VIA’s founder was a process engineer, and three decades later that origin still shapes how the place thinks. The building helps — a fusion of old and new, art and study, history and future, as Leahy describes it.
“It’s such an incredible place to get to come every day,” she says. That mix of the ancient and the restless is a decent metaphor for an agency that keeps rebuilding itself while sitting inside a 138-year-old landmark.
What VIA is known for: untangling the gnarly stuff
For most of its life, VIA has been known as the place that solves incredibly complex problems in clever ways — what Leahy long articulated as helping brands find their way to value creation. True, effective and a little polite.
O’Rourke, who joined as chief creative officer in January after stints at Wieden+Kennedy, Crispin, Grey and McCann, heard that reputation before he arrived. “The lore of that place is fantastic,” peers told him. “They’re like this mythical building full of geniuses way up in the Northeast.”
What the positioning lacked was teeth. So Leahy and O’Rourke rewrote it: VIA makes ideas with consequences.
Three things VIA does differently
First, they start at the end. “You can’t start with the data without understanding where your end consequence is,” Leahy says, “because if you do, you will follow the data and optimize to mediocrity.”
Second, they engineer rather than hope. “You’re not pushing a button and expecting an idea with consequences,” O’Rourke says. “You have to engineer them.” Start with the intended outcome and you own your destiny instead of leaving it to fate.
Third, they refuse to pick a side between art and science. That combination has been pumping through the agency’s veins since the beginning, and it’s what turns a consequence map into work people argue about.
Independence on steroids
Leahy has worked inside holding companies, through acquisitions and divestitures — she’s touched it all. Employee ownership, she says, is “like independence on steroids.”
The fun part is making your own calls about investments and big swings. The serious part shows up elsewhere. “It’s the moments when the decisions are hardest that independence matters the most to me,” she says, “because I can make a decision based in my values and what is the right thing to do for the people that I represent.”
O’Rourke, who has worked for WPP and IPG plus indies like Wieden and pre-sale Crispin, felt the difference immediately. “There’s a level of responsibility that comes with being an owner,” he says. “It drives deeper thinking and consideration in everybody.”
Why brands should work with VIA (and when they shouldn’t)
Leahy is refreshingly clear about the disqualifier. “If they want to do more of the same, we’re not the right guys. We’re just not.”
The proof is in the trajectory changes. VIA reminded the world that grape is a fruit and not just a flavor for Welch’s. It pulled Klondike back up after competitors knocked it down its own category. It reintroduced L.L.Bean with “Be an Outsider” and shifted how people saw their place in the brand. Golden Corral is posting record year after record year on a strategy built around being different and connected at the same time.
Ownership also makes them faster. Everyone at VIA is vibe coding tools, testing AI, building things daily — without an enterprise mandate freezing them into a stack that made sense two months ago.
Why talent chooses Portland — and Velocity
O’Rourke sees two streams. Early-career people who are sponges, and senior people who have collected all the scars and lessons and arrived at the moment where they can make incredible things without the baggage.
The middle is covered by Velocity, a network Leahy built of freelancers on retainer who get a project fee on top when activated. It kills the ramp-up and getting-to-know-you tax of ordinary freelance relationships and gives VIA deep ties to a fractional workforce around the world.
Compensation gets benchmarked across the entire Northeast, not just Portland. And the goal isn’t lifetime capture. “If our legacy is people out in the world that are like, that is the place where I really figured out what made me tick,” O’Rourke says, “I couldn’t think of a better way to be known.”
A 33-year-old underdog with an appropriate amount of weirdos
Leahy lands on underdogs, but with a caveat. “I don’t think VIA is a weirdo, but I do think we have an appropriate amount of weirdos, and we let them be weird.”
Evidence: she mentioned once that she likes disco balls, and now they’re everywhere she turns.
O’Rourke frames the underdog thing as deliberate. “We’re underdogs by choice,” he says, noting VIA sits outside the New York ecosystem while staying close enough to be part of it. Leahy, meanwhile, cannot stop hearing the cartoon theme. “Here it comes to save the day. We’re here to barrel in and fundamentally change the trajectory.”
Dear Sarah Steven: keep pushing
Leahy’s shout-out goes to Sarah Steven, the marketing leader at Big Y, the family-owned grocery chain with a fiercely loyal following across Connecticut and Massachusetts. VIA is about to shoot work with them that breaks every rule of traditional grocery advertising.
“Sarah is not only along for the ride, she is pushing us,” Leahy says, crediting her for backing an ambitious director, an ambitious editing partner and risks that are thoughtful, calculated and engineered rather than cool for the sake of cool.
O’Rourke went the other direction and looked backward, to Joyce King Thomas, recently inducted into the One Show Hall of Fame, who gave him his first job in New York. Her advice stuck: if the work is fantastic, the rest of the world falls into place.
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