Time to lock arms and lead

 

I’m excited. Really really excited, if not also profoundly aware of the responsibilities that come with the task ahead. After six years at Ketchum, four as Managing Director of Corporate and Public Affairs, and two as Deputy CEO, on the 1^st of January I’ll be stepping in to the position of Chief Executive Officer, Ketchum London.

It is such an honour to take on this prestigious and important role. I feel a huge responsibility to our people and our clients to maintain what makes us great, but also to demand and deliver change to ensure we are faster, smarter, better than we have ever been before. I’m so ambitious for our agency and for the London office. We are great, but I want us to be, and to be recognised as, the best agency in London. And I’m not referring to best PR agency, I mean best agency of any communications agency out there.

George Ketchum founded the agency in 1923 as an ad agency, before we later evolved in to being a public relations agency – clearly he was well ahead of his time. He recognised early that the way to really connect with people was through earned storytelling. At a time when PR is seen as the Holy Grail (see this article from Faris Yakob earlier this year https://mumbrella.com.au/everything-is-pr-429154), it is a great time to be in the industry.

So what does the best look like in 2018?

Unrelenting client service excellence. Data driven insight. Bold and brave strategic and creative thinking. Full channel delivery. And an entrepreneurial approach that empowers our people to constantly push our clients to also be faster, smarter, better than they have ever been before.

A communications agency is defined by its people. And at Ketchum in London we have some of the best in the agency world. But like most organisations we can sometimes be too tentative. Too cautious. 2018 will be about giving our people the tools, the confidence, and the permission to be more disruptive. Not disruptive for the sake of it, but disruptive to ensure our clients are reaching their audiences in a more authentic and engaging way than ever before, no matter where they are.

A few people have asked what will be different about Ketchum London in 2018 and I think the most visible thing will be our swagger. For too long we have been modest and a little shy. But we have got a lot to shout about. In 2017 alone we were the most awarded PR agency at Cannes, we won some of the biggest and most exciting pitches in the UK for Samsung and Discovery/Eurosport, and we attracted incredible talent like Neil McLelland, Mark Walsh, and Jamie Robertson. I’m certainly not known as shy and retiring, and I want at least a little bit of that to rub off on the whole of the agency in London.

We will continue to focus on our OneLondon strategy of one P&L and total integration. This not only means that our clients get the best team no matter where they sit in the agency, but it also means that we can give opportunities to our talent in all corners of the business.

There are many things to thank Denise Kaufmann for (more of that in another blog), but in particular I am grateful to have an exceptional senior team. The relationships I have built over the last six years with Deirdre Murphy (COO), Kirsty Sachrajda (HRD), and Gavin Cooper (FD) will be critical to our ongoing and accelerated growth. They are the most committed, ambitious, positive and loyal group of people and I am so happy that we are going to go in to this new chapter together.

It would be remiss of me to not touch on the challenges we see all around us, and which no doubt will have some impact in 2018, the most pressing being the lack of political leadership and the recklessness with which some global leaders are behaving. Brexit, Catalonia, Trump, Putin, May, North Korea…… there is unrest and challenges all around us.

This summer I had a phenomenal experience at Omnicom University, where I was immersed in leadership structures, behaviours, styles, and techniques. The professor who had the biggest impact on me was Nancy Koehn (http://nancykoehn.com/blog/about/) a historian who focuses her research on  how leaders, past and present, craft lives of purpose, worth, and impact. In our final lecture she said this:

‘The world has never been in a more perilous state with weak leadership and unrest. As there is a dive for the bottom it is up to ALL OF US to lock arms and hold the line on standards and decency. The world has never needed us more.’

I have eight weeks until I am officially in post. So in addition to using that time to meet all our clients and spend time with our people, ensuring that we are ready to hit the ground sprinting on Jan 2^nd – I will also be thinking about the bigger impact that myself, my team, and the whole London team can have on the world around us. I’ll be ensuring that our values and behaviours are so embedded in our everyday work, that it is second nature for each of us to hold the line.

Ketchum is a great agency and London is one of the jewels in the crown. I plan to make that jewel blindingly sparkle.