REBUILDING THE PIRATE SHIP

Last year, Andrew Scott took over the chief executive chair of an agency that was enduring one of its most unstable patches in recent memory. And now nine months into his gig, he’s celebrated his first major account win and he thinks there might be a few

Whybin\tbwa chief executive Andrew Scott says there are two types of executives in adland. “You can either be a builder or someone who stands sentry duty,” he quips as we sit down for what turns into a long chat.

He says that of the two, standing sentry duty—or inheriting a big, strong-performing agency—scares him far more.

“There’s only one way you can go and that’s down,” he says.

“When you go into a shop that has every piece of business across every category, you have to wonder what comes next. You could maybe grow different divisions, but often you’ll start losing accounts. You see this in agencies all the time. They build up and they go down.”

Scott jokes that standing sentry duty over a big agency that has everything would drive him mad, saying that he prefers to build things from the ground up. And by this measure, he found himself a long way from insanity when he moved across from Melbourne to the Auckland office last year.

He admits he knew that he had a challenge on his hands shortly after arriving.

“NBR wrote about five articles about our financial performance in the first few weeks of my arrival,” he says.

“It just so happens that the shit fell on my lap, but I enjoy it.”

Scott admits TBWA has gone through a tough few years, particularly 2013 when it lost the 2degrees account and 2014 when Mercury Energy went across to FCB.

“We didn’t have a good 2014,” Scott says, “and unfortunately, for Toby [Talbot] and Todd [Mccleay], managing through those times was tough.”

Both Talbot and Mcleay have since left the agency, joining an exodus that has since 2013 also included Andy Blood, Steve Kane and Dave King.

Suffice to say TBWA was in need of a steady executive hand to steer it through this uncertain patch—which is exactly why Scott (right) and executive creative director Christy Peacock were brought into the agency in October last year.

“Christy and I came in to settle the business down, understand what our strengths are and work out what we wanted to be to future-proof ourselves as an agency.”

Scott says this has necessitated an entire rethink of how the agency operates in a bid to make it more complicit with the needs of modern clients.

REMOVING THE LINES

He says one of the priorities was ripping down the siloes the teams across the business had previously been separated into.

“We have Whybin, which is brand communications; we have Dan, which is our digital specialist; we have Eleven, which are social content specialists; and then we have Integer, which is shopper-marketing,” Scott explains.

“So, for me, it’s about getting groups of people around the table to allow for an open briefing … We’ve also integrated social into all the teams, which previously sat on the outskirts as a part of PR. With that, you get all the tools at the table.”

Ripping down siloes invariably leads to staff cuts as duplicated roles are laid bare, and Scott says there were a few personnel changes along the way.

“When you change direction, you have to let certain people go, because they don’t fit with where you want to end up. It’s not easy.”

He says this transition was felt most among back office and administration staff, but also resulted in a reduction of account staff, leading to the agency reducing to around 120 staff across all departments.

“We’ve reduced in size from our prime year, which was probably 2012,” he says.

“In account service, we’ve shrunk. We now have 14 in account services. It was probably 18 before.”

While this does come off the back of a few tough years for the agency, Scott says the changes have, in part, been driven by a change in the way the account team works alongside strategists and creative.

“In the past, the account service person would go to the meeting, get the brief, come back, brief the strategist, who would then work with the creative,” he says.

“What you have now is that Christy goes to virtually every brief, so does the key planner and the account services person. Then you do an open brief. Christy will see it from a creative point of view, who sees it differently from the strategist and everyone else. Once you bring all those together, things become more nimble and faster.”