Time For The Ad Agency CEO To Go?

Have you ever checked the ratio of firings among Mad. Ave CCOs and CEOs?

It’s around 10 to one.

Which is odd, because doesn't corporate success rely on partnership and collaboration? And shouldn't that should float (or sink) all boats.

Apparently not on ‘the Ave’.

Unless, of course, there was no partnership in the first place and the CEO was the actual boss, the CCO (and CSO etc) just an employee.

Thus the business issues of the agency were the serious, important things, while the agency’s output/product was of secondary importance at best.

Ad agency CEOs tend to be remarkable individuals* with high charisma and people-skills.

It’s easy to see why clients often come to regard the CEO as the key representative of the agency, a personal friend even.

Though, as far as the client’s business is concerned, the agency’s only actual value lies in its output.

There are two main routes that networks go to deliver that output.

They hire stellar people to create and deliver stellar work.

Or they hire a CEO who then hires the people of his (still usually a him, I'm afraid) choice.

These days, the latter approach is the runaway favorite.

Problem with the former approach, is that it risks making the agency idea-centric (like the NFL is football-centric, or Hersheys chocolate-centric lol).

Why 'problem'? Because, for many CEOs, idea-centricity forces the ad agency to be a partnership where there's a danger that the creative work is the clients' reason for being there and NOT the would-be all-powerful CEO. These CEOs didn't put in all that work/sell their souls to the Devil to be anything less than all-powerful!

In the best creative agencies (few and far between as they are), the senior partners at the agency start the agency or arrive together as partners from day one.

In the less successful creative agencies, the CEO tends to be hired first and put in charge, the rest of the ‘team’ to be put together at his (still a him) pleasure.

Copious evidence reveals that, when ad agency CEOs bring in people of their choice, the de facto starting point for these people is as subordinates.

A CEO's choice tends also to prioritize character over ability. Needless to say character priority #1 is being reasonable - as good a guarantee as you'll get that creative excellence will never be fought for.

Wrong. Nothing should ever be prioritized over ability - nothing. After all, that's what clients pay the big bucks for. 

Stellar ability and the power it draws are problematic in an agency where the CEO believes the top-dog spot is already taken. 

Thus what seems to result in 99% of agencies is a kind of 'talent-search-as-self-serving-corporate-engineering' to ensure that nobody's reputation/ability surpasses that of the CEO.

Inevitably this results in less-than-optimal product/output. 

When less-than-stellar hirings inevitably fail, they can be let go with little attendant fuss. Meanwhile, the CEO can bemoan the riotous, faster-than-ever-moving world he (yup, still a he for the most part) and his clients are battling together/declare how tough it is to get it right/trumpet his excitement at the new search.

Pure common sense should dictate that, while normal in most industries, the traditional-CEO-figure model doesn't work properly in companies whose output is creativity and strategy: nobody in the company should know strategy better than the CSO or creativity than the CCO, thus nobody else should have final say over agency output.

What these agency leaders need is a real partner - a COO (chief operating officer) perhaps, to ensure that vital process and operations - like those to do with actually getting paid - are as robust as can be.

These three – CCO, CSO, COO – should be equal partners in the same way as were, say, Larry, Sergei and Eric Schmidt; ie. with a clear understanding of who creates and curates the actual product/output.

Ad agencies first began to get in trouble when they shifted from being ideation companies - which, if you think about it, could arguably have ended up as Googles themselves one day - to being service (or should that be servile) companies. 

Imagine if, instead of the genius of Larry and Sergei, Google had've been launched by an all-powerful CEO with people under him most notable for their character, personability and easygoingness? 

I’m all for people-skills, charm and charisma. But only when these valuable attributes are 100% in service of the work. Then what you get is a culture of respect, not vacuous likeability.

When charm and niceness – even to a certain extent, efficiency – become the pillars of an ad agency, then the agency truly has become a commodity.

New business pitches are aptly called beauty contests, with so-called ‘chemistry sessions’ forming a – if not the – critical selection criterion.

Instead of work/output/product/creative excellence leading (in my first pitch in the US, the client team left behind one of their scoring sheets - creativity was ranked seventh out of 10 agency requirements in importance), pitches are all about salesmanship and presentation skills.

All in all, it’s a highly complex, chicken-egg situation. What came first, the need of a charismatic CEO because of bad work, or a dearth of great work because of CEOs' self-serving missions? My answer: you can always get great work if you want it badly enough.

Truly effective leaders in every field share one essential quality: the desire to be the dumbest person in the room.

To ensure that, they of course surround themselves with the very best people. 

When the CEO is the most exciting thing about an agency, the big figure, the Go-to Guy, the Big Kahuna, Da Maaan, it’s either because he (Da Maaaan is still a man) hasn't found any brilliant people, or because he has no intention of doing so.

* Usually men I'm afraid...