The MENA region offers growth on a scale hard to find elsewhere, but only for those willing to commit, adapt, and align with the region’s long-term vision. In this episode of Waypointers, partner Jim Houghton is joined by Mike Khouri, Founder & CEO of Tactical. Together they explore the realities of scaling an agency in one of the fastest-growing, but most nuanced, markets in the world and how Mike and his team have done the hard yard to become one of the region’s pre-eminent independent ...

At a time when growth is hard to come by in traditional markets, the Gulf offers something rare: scale, ambition, excitement and clients hungry for transformation. In this episode of Waypointers, partner Jim Houghton sits down with colleague, MD Gary Whyte to explore the opportunity and discuss why it’s not always a straightforward play for agencies; missteps can easily happen for businesses that don’t do their homework. Gary shares practical lessons from working with independent agenci...

Agencies in the performance marketing sector are arguably having to face up to change faster than other parts of marketing services. When the platforms you’ve built your career and businesses around over the last 20 years are suddenly transforming, you have to reinvent yourself or face oblivion. For this Waypointers episode (link) partner Phil Gripton talks to someone who was there at the dawn of performance, Joe Procter, co-founder of Open Partners. Open Partners was founded around the conce...

Private equity grabs most of the headlines in our sector, but without the range of facilities your bank has to offer, you might find it hard to grow your agency effectively. Exactly quite how significant that contribution can be comes to life in this latest Waypointers episode (link), where partner Matt Lacey talks to Frazer Barrs, Head of Media, within Barclays Corporate. If you thought you knew what your bank can do for your scaled business, you’re in for a few surprises. Frazer’s appearanc...

A successful agency founder needs conviction and vision. Sam Fenton-Elstone, the CEO and founding partner of ‘Anything is Possible’ has both in abundance. In this episode of Waypointers, Sam gives our listeners an up-close and personal insight into the journey he’s been on so far, and where he and his team are taking ‘Anything is Possible’. If you’ve not yet worked it out from the name of his agency, Sam is on a no-holds barred growth mission. He’s taken his learnings from some of the big ind...

Driving agency growth depends on a strong leadership team and that includes having a CFO who is deeply embedded within the business. Or at least that’s the way it should be. Despite this being a role that is central to agency success, conversations about what makes for a good CFO, including skillset and behaviour, gets relatively little airtime in our industry press. Ironically that changes when things go wrong, and then the CFO becomes a useful scapegoat, sometimes even finding themselves in...

Most of the year, the advertising industry barely registers in the world at large. But that changes as we head into the festive season. Indeed, the first Christmas TV ads increasingly mark the start of this season and conversations about ad creative enter the mainstream. Pretty much everyone has a view on the year’s John Lewis ad as it makes headlines across both traditional and social media. With this in mind, there’s no better time to focus in on advertising creative – the state of play and...

If you ask most agency leaders, very few will claim to enjoy negotiating. Sure, it’s a necessary part of business, but secretly most of them will be wondering how they could do things better. Could they have got negotiated better payment terms; could they have secured a larger remit with a client; could they have hired that senior person for less? Plus, negotiating can be filled with emotion, and dealing with emotion in the workplace can be deeply uncomfortable. This lively and ...

A new challenger on the block At Waypoint we talk often about Challengers, fast growing agencies and agency groups that are born digital and performance first, who deliver on the “modern marketing brief.” In this episode, Waypoint partner Matt Lacey profiles a new entrant to the Challenger cohort. That new entrant is SAMY Alliance, a fast-growing, social-first agency group, intent on partnering with the world’s most recognisable brands who are seeking a modern, social-first solution. SAMY...

Some agency and tech businesses have got their processes around tendering for public sectors contracts off to a tee. Many others are put off by a set of negative perceptions; that the whole thing is beset with red tape and simply not worth the hassle. They might have tendered in the past, simply to learn several weeks after the cutoff date, that they’ve not been successful. No feedback, no learning, no nothing. No wonder they decided not to go back for more. Changing times Very soon al...

Disruption is a recurrent theme in our Waypointers podcast and it often happens at the hands of outsiders – as our previous episode with a former US Marine, Justin Lewis shows. The guest in our latest episode is Simon Martin, the founder and chief executive of Oliver. Over the last 20 years Simon has brought significant disruption to the ad industry. His unique perspective comes from having started his career in the insurance sector where he saw the way in which deeply embedded relationships ...

Serving in the military provides a unique perspective on leadership. In this episode of the podcast, Waypoint Partner Matt Lacey sat down with former US marine Justin Lewis to learn about his very personal form of leadership at Constellation, a collective of best-in-class agencies within challenger network, Stagwell. Justin’s take on leadership is inspiring and he speaks with great passion. There is much here for new and experienced agency heads alike to learn as well as for entreprene...

As a sector, market research has been experimenting with machine learning and predictive algorithms earlier than many other parts of the marketing services industry; the same is true of AI. Research group STRAT7 has been building expertise in AI well ahead of ChatGPT and generative AI becoming mainstream. This AI themed episode of Waypointers sees STRAT7 leaders Barrie Brien and Paul Jackson in conversation with Waypoint’s tech editor Martin Ward explaining their approach to harnessing...

2023 was a busy year for M&A in the PR/comms industry. One of the most significant of these deals was announced in October when Lansons was acquired by Team Farner. This episode of Waypointers sees Gordon Tempest-Hay, the CEO of Lansons telling Waypoint partner Jim Houghton the story behind the deal headlines and his and Farner’s ambitions – “to become the European management consultancy for integrated communications”. Farner might not be a well-known entity in the UK...

To mark the start of 2024 this episode of Waypointers looks to the future, specifically the future of AI and tech more broadly, covering business, society and beyond. Our guest is the inspirational Nell Watson, one of the most compelling global voices discussing the direction of travel for AI and tech. Nell is a tech ethicist, researcher and reformer, “a trailblazer in emerging technologies such as machine vision and A.I. ethics.” She is president of the European Responsible AI...

In this episode of Waypointers our guest is Jason Foo, the CEO of independent agency, BBD Perfect Storm, a brand and cultural transformation company, helping clients transform themselves and their categories for increased growth and positive societal impact. The conversation with Waypoint partner Jim Houghton is a fascinating one, covering purpose, culture, leadership, AI/automation and much more. Jason talks about the journey he and his team went on to become a B Corp business ...

Leading agency VCCP created headlines earlier in the year when it launched AI agency, Faith, with Sage as a founding client. In this episode of Waypointers, Faith’s innovation director Peter Gasston explains why VCCP took the decision to make this major investment in technology and what the journey has been like so far. Interestingly Peter explains that the impetus was largely led by the creative department within VCCP who were increasingly experimenting with generative AI tools ...

Peter Reid, the CEO of MSQ Partners is the next guest in our Challenger agency series. A former McKinsey consultant, Peter has taken MSQ on quite a journey. He joined in 2007 to turn around a business that at the time was known as Media Square and that came with significant financial challenges. After several years of streamlining, in 2010 Peter became CEO and in 2011 took the business private which he describes as a key way to establish a sustainable financial structure and to ...