Dan Monheit, the co-founder of Hardhat, is taking over as sole owner of the agency.
Monheit’s move is the latest development in a busy few months at the independent creative agency based out of Melbourne with Andy Segal and Chris Hince appointed ECDs and a raft of other senior hires and internal promotions.
AdNews spoke to Monheit about what prompted his move at Hardhat – which was founded in 2005 by Monheit and Justin Kabbani when they were in their mid 20s – and the future strategy for the agency.
“It was a very strong, very successful, very fruitful partnership and we did build a wonderful business together, but it's been 18 years and we're not the same people that we were; a lot changes over that time.
“Justin developed other interests and other investments over the years and I think he just got to a point where he felt like they were really calling his name.
“At the same time, I’m feeling more bullish than ever about the future of the agency and the built-on behaviour proposition that we've been really strong in taking to market in the last two or three years.”
Monheit said it was a “fairly elegant” move into the next chapter as it was clear for both him and Kabbani what the next moves were, with one being Monheit taking over a newly created CEO role.
“Stepping into the CEO role, it's clear that the buck stops with me. That goes for our staff and for our clients, so I’m pretty excited and energised about that responsibility.
“There’s no major changes, because the business I’ve just bought the other half of is a business that I love and that I think is going from strength to strength.”
He said that the strategy moving forward is replicating more of what they’re already achieving around their two core disciplines.
“The proposition is built on behaviour and the underlying belief is that every brief is a behaviour change brief. All behaviour change models are built around desirability and ease.
“We have these two core disciplines of creative commons, which is all about building desirability, and digital CX, which is all about building ease. They run as separate specialisations, but increasingly cross-pollinate for clients.
“The new strategy is just more of the best bits of the old strategy: continuing to grow, continuing to invest in our best client relationships and continuing to take on the opportunities that make the most sense for us, which we're increasingly seeing around these challenger brands, who really have more to gain from behaviour change than anybody.”
Monheit said that the first 18 years of Hardhat were “a wonderful chapter” and that he now feels like there's a new level of confidence and certainty in who they are as a business.
“I guess like an 18-year-old person, you become an adult and you gain the confidence to know how you do your best work and what sort of people you do your best work with, and I feel like we've been lucky enough to find that over the years.
“It's really just accelerating the core types of work that we do for the challenger brands that we do it for.
"Let's see how far we can take this thing.”
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