There’s a wonderful children’s book called “What Do You Do With An Idea?” It’s an inspirational tale about a young boy who has the courage to let his idea grow, to nurture it, to defend it and above all, to let it become a reality. For many talented creatives in the marketing profession, this is the story of their lives. In an industry that shifts constantly back and forth from “hard data” to “pretty pictures,” it’s clear that both elements are needed for campaign success. We see this at the end of the book, too, since the answer to the question in the title is (spoiler alert!) that “you change the world.” Clearly, great ideas have power.
Coming up with simple, great ideas, doesn’t happen on its own. As we discovered in this edition of In Partnership With, there’s some magic, some teamwork and a little bit of luck involved. At the end of the day, it’s about leveraging the power of partnerships to change the world. And in a way, that’s exactly what Arthur Fleischmann has done as the Group CEO of Ogilvy Canada and john st. for over 20 years, now culminating as WPP’s Country Manager for Canada. In this article, enjoy Arthur’s back story, lessons learned along the way, guidance for managing large teams and tips for those considering the profession.
An Overnight Success Story 20 Years in the Making
Arthur started his career in the 1990s and met his long-standing partners at the second agency he ever worked at. It was at the shop called Ammirati Puris which was the second office to open outside of New York. Six years into that venture, Arthur met Angus Tucker, Stephen Jurisic and Emily Bain. Jane Tucker worked with that team which also built on Athur and Jane’s prior time working together at another agency. This core group would grow into the team that led john st. to its current level of success. But first, some background.
Around 2000, this core group was chatting about how they may want to start something new together. After helping build an office for a network (IPG), why not try their hand at building for themselves? They had an idea and let it soar.
In summer 2001, Arthur became john st.’s President, Angus and Stephen were co-Creative Directors and Emily was Head of Strategy. Jane Tucker joined as Head of Clients and Operations. To get the agency launched, they hired a couple of employees to support “some tiny clients,” according to Arthur. After getting some initial traction, 9/11 happened and they were all terrified for the economic outlook for the business. But it worked out to be okay. They started picking up clients, including Kruger Products, a traditional CPG brand whose then-CMO Nancy Marcus had the vision and nerve to trust a young start up. Fast forward to 2013, Arthur reflects that the agency continued to grow and there were 80 people employed.
The team was proud of some of the strong work they were delivering for what Arthur describes as a “pretty eclectic client base.”
That’s when Ogilvy approached Arthur regarding their interest in an acquisition of the agency.
Partnership or Independence?
After considering the options for selling the shop and joining the Ogilvy network, some global work made the decision easy. Arthur’s team was needing support in Russia, India, Japan and other countries. The challenge as an independent shop was that a global network didn’t exist to speed media buying, localization services and operations. So Arthur and his senior team considered the idea further. They thought it might be the time to form a partnership with WPP. The decision was a fruitful one as they doubled in size between 2013 and 2018. Not only that, some of the best, most notable work of their history was completed at that point.
Becoming part of an agency network is seen as the beginning of the end. But that has not been the experience for john st. Their work, people and clients just got better.
By 2018, it was clear it was time to plan for a time when the “founding partners” were not also the operators. Having grown to 150+ people and a couple of offices, things had clearly changed. As a result, a new leadership group was empowered to lead john st. while WPP asked Arthur to oversee Ogilvy’s operations across Canada. Most recently to start off 2021, Arthur took on an added role of Country Manager for WPP.
Biggest Surprises Along the Journey
Looking back over the last 20 years is always interesting, notes Arthur. Especially when he looks at the last year, he views it as almost a completely separate chapter. Put another way, he says anything he learned up until 2020 was probably now useless. Not literally, he admits, but who the hell knew what was next?
Even during a pandemic, Arthur holds to the idea that the marketing agency world is essentially a human resources, talent-based business.
Most agencies spend between 60 cents to 75 cents on the dollar that comes in on staff. This is a shockingly high percentage, underlines Arthur.
He believes most of his clients would probably be down around 20 cents because they have factories, warehouses and major technology.
What has become clearer to Arthur over time is that there is a real imperative to invest in talent development. More often than not, the least investment agencies make is in talent management and development. This comes in the form or nurturing people both as people and as professionals. Most senior leaders come from an era where they received training programs. But none of them really thought about D&I, mental health or physical health programs. Arthur reflects that many agency leaders just took it for granted that their people didn’t care about that or didn’t need it.
One of the key learnings is you now know your biggest assets go down the elevator at night.
With 60% to 75% of an agency’s revenue going into their teams, there’s a huge need to invest in them. Arthur is adamant that the agency must nurture them, develop them and keep them healthy. If not, then there is no agency. And if there’s no agency, there’s no business. He thinks 2020 made that incredibly acute, noting more mental health issues as an industry. Often, agency leaders talk about the team’s output. Marketers use fancy words for content and personalization at scale and all that. But actually what Arthur thinks we should focus on more than anything are the human beings who create that work. Those who come up with the ideas and who create that value for agencies and for their clients.
That is his biggest learning, as schmaltzy as it sounds. Arthur’s core idea now is that his team’s development is the ROI for the agency.
Next Steps for Media & the Marketing Funnel
With his eye on the constantly-evolving media space, Arthur is reflective. Many will talk about “performance media” versus “brand media.” Arthur isn’t buying it when some people say “of course you need both.” This is because he doesn’t actually think they’re two separate things.
Especially in recent years, Arthur sees that media sellers, tech stack providers and content creators seem to overcomplicate things.
What he believes is, if you’re doing it right, all communication and marketing is performance marketing. For example, if you’re building awareness and affinity, we know empirically that drives site and store traffic. That ultimately drives commerce. It’s not about what was traditionally called the “end of funnel” activation or closing the deal.
The funnel may still well exist – and there’s some debate on that. But the “in the funnel” initiatives, whether it be digital or social content, can drive as much to build your brand affinity and love. Arthur continues that it’s as effective to drive purchase as a TV ad or an experience if it’s done properly. So, the idea of a funnel – Arthur does believe in it conceptually – is that you have to be aware of something before you can be interested and before you can buy it. Arthur gets that construct. But it’s not a perfect model.
Instead of a funnel, Arthur believes we need to be thinking more of a fluid continuum that goes from one end to the next and back again, almost on a minute-by-minute basis.
So, Arthur submits those are two ends of the spectrum of what he takes away. One is on the more pragmatic side of “what is advertising today” and the other is all about the people. That’s literally it.
Partnerships as the Secret Sauce
Partnerships come in varied shapes and sizes. Whether it’s internal with your teams, external with clients or further with customers, there’s a level of reciprocity that exists between groups. As long as everyone is getting what they need from the partnership, they will grow and flourish.
This has proven to be true for Arthur as well. Whether at Ammirati or in more recent years, Arthur has been transparent with any new senior leadership team that he has – in his estimation – a narrow set of skills. Arthur realized very quickly that if he was going to be successful, he had to have people around him who could add value where he couldn’t to complement his strengths.
That’s where a little bit of luck fell in there, he continues. Having met up with Angus and Steve, Emily and Jane – Arthur says he doesn’t want to be schmaltzy – but he thinks it’s magic.
He has studied groups and teams, even groups of performers. What Arthur found is that there aren’t that many examples of partnerships of groups of people that have been so prolific or so happy together. And so productive together. He thinks he learned that lesson early on.
There is real power in bringing together the right people who fit together like puzzle pieces.
It was especially helpful for Arthur to have all of those ‘puzzle pieces’ in the same ‘box’ at Ammirati. He found this is important when life throws you a curveball, either inside or outside of the office experience. Having a team around you who can support you and fill in when you need to step back is crucial. It’s the idea of a well choreographed dance. That is so critical, acknowledges Arthur. And he admits he’s been lucky to realize this and to have been able to lead and make the most of it.
Communication Makes New Partnerships Possible
As Arthur reflects on his current role where he’s working with teams that are less planned in terms of their composition (unlike at john st.), it’s more challenging. It’s exciting! Both teams (in the case of a merger or partnership) don’t get to choose each other from from ground up. But, he says, you learn, you teach some of those connectivity skills, such as listening or sense making skills, being able to argue fairly (as opposed to making it about the personal).
If you find you’re saying “you” or “you do this” in a discussion, you’re probably failing, as opposed to talking about the issue (not the person).
The alternative is to say “when this happens, that is how it makes me feel; or when this occurs, I can’t do that.” Arthur reminds that those are fairer arguments and such skills are teachable.
What Arthur hopes his legacy is as he works with broader teams is to share those skills he had to learn as an entrepreneur in his partnerships. Today, Arthur’s opportunity is to teach these skills to corporate partners, and more importantly, to clients.
The real magic comes when Arthur can teach clients how to partner with agencies.
This includes a positive starting place: simply assume everyone is really, truly trying to do their very best, even when they make a mistake. Next, Arthur coaches for partners of all types to listen to what the person is trying to say – what their idea is – even if they’re not articulating it terribly well. Asking questions, such as “could you explain that a little further” or “what do you mean by that?” are useful. These are the basic partnership building skills that Arthur thinks we can all use, even if you’re not lucky enough to cherry pick your own partnership team.
Encouragement for the Future
Arthur is a glass overflowing kind of guy. Not even half full. He thinks advertising continues to be one of the most exciting industries. Sure, you can get overwhelmed by a lot of the doublespeak and the technology and all that.
Marketing still just comes down to applying a bit of creativity to problem solving.
All the talk of technology and platforms and automation and AI and everything else, all of it is in service of a great idea. A simple, great idea. Upon reflection, over the last 25 or 30 years Arthur has been in the business, that hasn’t changed. None of that’s any different today than it was in 1989 when he switched from marketing into advertising. For newcomers exploring the profession, he just says: “have fun, join the industry, respect one another.” Wise words, indeed, and a simple, magical idea worth exploring.
In Partnership With
Arthur Fleischmann co-founded john st. advertising in 2001. After growing john st. into one of Canada’s top independent shops, john st. joined the WPP network in 2013. Within 5 years of the agency’s acquisition, Arthur had doubled its size. With 175 employees and offices in Toronto and Montreal, john st. is one of WPP’s largest and most successful brands in Canada. In 2019, Arthur was promoted to Group CEO, overseeing the operations of john st., Ogilvy and Ogilvy Health Canada. In January 2021, Arthur added the role of Country Manager to help deliver WPP‘s extensive technology, CE&C and communications offerings to Canadian clients and improve collaboration among its agency brands.
Tim Bishop, CM is a multi-disciplined executive with a proven record of optimizing strategic efforts to expand the influence of leading organizations, such as the Canadian Marketing Association, Cineplex Entertainment, Lavalife.com, IMI International and Northstar Research Partners. In Partnership With is his latest focus to curate Canadian marketing experts to celebrate the power of strategic partnerships in a perspective-based content series.