AdNews spoke to Adam Washington about his first year as CEO of full-service customer experience agency CX Lavender.
You took the reins just over a year ago. What have you learnt?
I joined CXL after long stints in indie and network agencies because the team was perfectly positioned to help clients actually realise the potential of great customer experience, not just promise it. For many organisations, that’s been harder in practice than in principle, but ironically the reason is simple: if you start by creating real consumer value, not aiming for commercial outcomes, those outcomes naturally follow.
In my first year, I’ve been focused on making sure that philosophy has shaped our processes, services and positioning, which was at the heart of our 25th birthday relaunch late last year. Putting people first grows business, so ‘We Make Stuff for People’.
My biggest learning in the past 12 months? Probably the power of clear, consistent vision and safe, supportive culture as a multiplying effect. If you can land those, everything else will follow.
What is the biggest hurdle at the moment for agencies?
That might look different for other types of agencies, but in our world, it’s become more critical than ever that we demonstrate attributable commercial return.
Tightening budgets are leading to scrutiny of every investment. Agencies that can’t demonstrate their work’s role in driving results will be more susceptible to budget cuts and client insourcing decision making. So commerciality in all agency thinking is critical right now (and makes our focus on customer value creation as the key all the more important).
We’re seeing a slowing in hiring among agencies and redundancies across media platforms in contrast to the post lockdown frenzy to hire. Is talent available?
Compared to six months ago, the creative, digital and technical talent market is night and day. Mid-level roles we had open for months are now being filled within weeks, and at the senior level, media and tech industry redundancies have meant there are many folks looking for leadership positions in our world. It’s a great time for anyone trying to build a strong agency team.
The market is said to be slow, with brands cautious in an uncertain economic climate. What are you seeing out there?
This, of course, is true. Fewer pitches are being held, pre-approved budgets are being cut and client headcounts are being reduced. But we can’t let it become an excuse for slowing agency growth. As the brilliant Chris Savage often reminds me, “Conditions are always right”, and he’s right, of course. As agency partners, it’s our jobs to help our clients navigate choppy waters by creating new, more relevant value and holding ourselves accountable for growth. If we do that job well, we’ll continue to prosper.
SMI numbers showing negative numbers May (compared to election spend) and June (non election in 2022). What does this mean?
The 5.5% drop reflects equivalent reductions we’re seeing across creative, digital and technical budgets, but looking more closely, spend is up in digital, video and search. A 15% drop in digital audio perhaps reflects some of the post-pandemic podcast fatigue we’ve seen in results from folks like Spotify, but increasing outdoor spend in the quarter should give us confidence clients are investing for growth (albeit judiciously).
The WFH revolution. What are the pressures from staff on this? Is there an ideal hybrid working model (days in office Vs home)?
Almost four years on, I can’t believe how many op eds still run on this subject each day… Flexible working has been proven to work, and I can’t see us returning to the old ways.
I’ve always held the view that if we don’t trust our people, we shouldn’t have hired them, and hybrid work has been transformative for staff personally without negatively impacting billable productivity. For CXL, that hasn’t changed – we maintain a fully flexible policy, although we’ve naturally settled into most folks coming together every Tuesday and Thursday at a minimum.
Of course, there is huge, distinct value through time spent physically together – the balance we’ve struck benefits from this, without enforcing a fixed number of days. It’s working for us.
AI is the big buzzword. Will it really have an impact on advertising?
It’s going to have a very real impact, and faster than most agencies are planning for. The key distinction is the word ‘generative’ – AI itself just describes a branch of computer science – over the years it’s developed as machine learning, then, deep learning made possible by neural nets, taking us to this point, where generative AI describes self-deterministic, self-learning capability that’s given rise to the likes of ChatGPT and DALL-E we’ve all been so impressed by. But these examples are only the earliest taste of what’s about to become possible.
Generative AI, unlike wearables, VR, the metaverse and every other tech horizon that was promised as the next smartphone revolution, really is the next tech sea change. Of course, agencies should be thinking about how it will impact their workflows, resourcing and capability, but that’s not enough. With technology that can help us solve almost any problem we can imagine, we’ll need to challenge some core conventions to decide which new problems we should solve to future proof our clients’ businesses if we still want to be here in five years’ time.
Our CXL team is investing very heavily in this space.
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