Advertising has been part of my life for as long as I remember. My father was a successful adman, who started out in traffic, became an account man, started his own agency, became the Managing Director (President) of DDB London for 5 years and then set up Rapp Collins around Europe for Omnicom. My earliest memories of the business are of my father bringing home commercials that he wanted to me to see. One of my all time favorite ads dates back to those days; the VW Golf GTI "Casino" commercial.
Having studied law at Queen Mary College, University of London, I decided to follow my father into advertising. My reasoning was simple: I wanted to run a business some day and, ideally, one that produced a product that I felt passionate about. Advertising seemed like a pretty fertile place for that ambition to be realized.
During my career, I have thoroughly enjoyed being a practitioner - part account guy, part planner and, in large part, a frustrated copywriter. As Sir Frank Lowe used to proclaim; "if you are not helping to make the work better, you are not helping at all". That has been a guiding principle I have followed throughout my career. To this day, I am at my happiest when I am knee deep in a creative review, or trying to work through a thorny strategic problem on a giant white board.
I eventually realized my ambition of running an agency back in 2003. I've now had the good fortune of running three agencies, in different capacities: Lowe and Euro RSCG in London, and Publicis West in the US. I honestly don't think there is a more thrilling job than running an agency. I loved the variety of challenges it offered: solving a myriad of different client issues, thinking about the agency's positioning (especially when you are involved in a turnaround), constantly pitching for new business and, critically, building a team around you.
At the start of 2013, I was hired by Andrew Robertson to lead the AT&T business at BBDO. It was and remains BBDO's largest client in North America and its second largest client worldwide. Based in New York, I managed a team of over 225 FTEs, across three different offices (NY, Atlanta, Dallas). In many respects, it was like running an agency, given the size of the team, the variety of challenges and the phenomenal volume of work we created on the business.
There is a lot that I am proud of from my time on AT&T. Winning the consolidated creative and media business in 2016 was probably the pinnacle. It is reported to have been the largest pitch in the history of advertising in America, so it was a critically important for Omnicom, BBDO and Hearts & Science. It was a hard fought pitch, but we delivered a clear piece of thinking, created powerful executions and put in place a new operating model that re-united creative & media.
Beyond the pitch win, I am really proud of the quality of work we produced on AT&T. The AT&T account was consistently one of most awarded accounts at BBDO and the breadth of work we won awards on was something I took pride in. The last "It Can Wait" commercial we created ("From One Second to The Next") was one of the most highly awarded films in the world in 2016. It picked up 43 major creative awards, including a gold and silver Lion at Cannes, 3 golds and 1 silver at The One Show and a graphite & wood pencil at D&AD. That said, I was equally proud of the Lilly campaign that delivered all the hard hitting retail messages. Lilly was given the label of "advertising's new it girl" by Ad Age, which was pretty impressive for a spokesperson who was selling a myriad of phones and deals.
AT&T was a tough business to move on from, but after 5 years leading the business and with the centre of gravity shifting to LA (the new home of AT&T's Entertainment Group), it felt like the right time. And there is something to be said for leaving on a high.
My last role at BBDO was probably the one where I managed to bank the most joy. I led a broad portfolio of local and global clients which included Exxon Mobil (Corporate brand), Visa Inc, PepsiCo, Macy’s and AARP. If variety is indeed the spice of life, I found myself in the very fortunate position of working with a wonderful team of brilliant minds solving a broad range of business problems for our clients. Not a day went by where I didn’t learn or experience something new, even in the midst of a global pandemic.
At the start of 2021, I decided it was time for a new challenge, in part driven by my father’s passing. I needed something big and all consuming to fill the gap he’d left behind, so I took on the role of turning around the Verizon relationship with IPG as President of Team Verizon. I knew it was high risk, but I believed I could help make things better.
I’ve always espoused the view that if everyone on the team can do one thing every day to make the business a little better, however small, it will make relationship and the work significantly better across a year. Sadly, I was wrong. Despite proposing a new operating model, recommending a new approach to defining Verizon’s value proposition and throwing myself at trying to improve the creative work, I achieved little to no change.. I can’t say it was a rewarding or productive 6 months, but I did get to work with some incredibly resilient and hard working people, a number of whom I hope to work with again some day.
For now, I am keeping myself busy with various consulting projects and am very focussed on finding a new permanent role as soon as my restrictive covenants lapse at the end of February 2024. I need to get back to working through big, thorny strategic problems for complex clients on my virtual whiteboard.