This first appeared in the March/April edition of AdNews.
Consultancy and family are two terms that don’t traditionally go hand-in-hand, but that’s exactly what you’ll find when you meet the Interactive team. AdNews sat down with its leadership team for a never-before-seen look into who Accenture Interactive really is.
Photos taken by Steven Chee exclusively for AdNews.
When you think of a big global consultancy, likening it to one big family is probably not the first comparison that springs to mind. Step inside the world of Accenture Interactive though and you’ll begin to see that’s exactly how the marketing division of Accenture really is.
Over the years, its portfolio has expanded with acquisitions from all facets of the marketing world to bring together the best collective of creative, design, strategy and innovation to truly reimagine and transform its clients’ businesses. Locally, these include creative agency The Monkeys, branding and design agency Maud, design and innovation firm Fjord and strategy and innovation business 2nd Road.
Until now though, for most in adland, the inner workings of this family have not fully been understood. Many have tried to replicate but without the right culture and an open mind, the team at Interactive all agree it’s unlikely to succeed.
Mark Green, group CEO and co-founder of The Monkeys and lead at Accenture Interactive ANZ, tells AdNews the decision by the agency’s co-founders Scott Nowell and Justin Drape to be acquired by the consultancy boiled down to its mission to continue to transform the influence that creativity has on business.
“That’s not from just an advertising standpoint, it’s from a brand, customer service and cultural need,” Green says.
“It felt like Accenture, similarly, was coming on this journey to get through digital and technology, getting closer to relationships with people and governments and services. And the combination, whilst it would probably take a few elbows to get right, felt like a bigger transformative idea than picking a more well-trodden path.
“We’ve never been afraid to swing for the fence and that was a good example of doing that. Three and a half years later, here we are.”
Green says the acquisition came together with some help from former client Mark Buckman who had been working with Interactive in Europe. Today, Buckman is a senior advisor with the local Accenture Interactive team.
“I had been working within Accenture Interactive across Europe and witnessed the tectonic changes impacting the industry and the emergence of a new breed of agency: part tech, part consultancy, part agency that could deliver digitally enabled integrated customer experience,” Buckman says.
“I had introduced Karmarama to Accenture Interactive in the UK and saw many parallels in Australia and having worked closely with The Monkeys while at Telstra, and knowing Accenture’s pursuit of leading creative agencies, The Monkeys was an obvious match.”
At the time of the acquisition, many questioned whether The Monkeys would be able to maintain the same creative control and culture it had as an independent. With many mergers and acquisitions, these tend to be thrown out the window and was one of the reasons that the co-founders denied offers from others to purchase their indie hot shop.
Scott Nowell, group chief creative officer (CCO) and co-founder of The Monkeys and group CCO at Accenture Interactive ANZ, says the discussions were different with Accenture.
“I think for Mark, Justin and I, we started the company as an alternative to traditional advertising agencies and we wanted to do things differently. We did that,” Nowell says.
“We had other discussions, but it felt like those were leading to the same thing. Whereas the discussion with Accenture, we got in the room [and] the first meeting we had with them they didn’t want to talk about money. It was nothing to do with earn-outs and all the financial stuff.
“They just wanted to know, how do you create such a strong culture and how do you keep these people? How do you keep that culture going? For us, culture being the single biggest force that binds a company together, we were immediately impressed by that approach.”
The opportunities within Interactive and the broader consultancy are boundless as Green, Nowell and their colleagues have come to learn. Nowell describes joining Interactive as like “chucking a rocket booster onto your company”.
Rather than just taking the pay cheque and running, he says this really is the next chapter for The Monkeys as it continues on its path as a creative powerhouse alongside the whole Interactive family.
Wedded through the work
Like any marriage, getting it right doesn’t happen overnight. There are ups and downs. Things that may surprise you about your partner - both good and bad. Despite some differences though, it’s sharing the same mindset that brings both parties together.
That’s how Abhishek Malaviya, managing director of Accenture Interactive, sees the new additions to the consultancy’s family.
“I wouldn’t say there are challenges. I think there are things that we learn about each other everyday,” Malaviya says.
“It’s like any marriage, you’ll always find some areas that you are learning constantly about each other. I’m a firm believer, if you’ve got the right intention behind what you’re trying to do, you will have the best outcome.”
Malaviya has been with the consultancy for close to 17 years. Throughout that time he has seen the company undergo six or seven restructures and in the last few years has welcomed in newer members to the family.
Since adding in the capabilities and teams from The Monkeys, Fjord, Maud and 2nd Road to the Interactive team, he says the energy and culture has been infectious.
“Every time the acquisition has brought in some very good talent and it’s an experience where we’ve had to evolve. That’s one thing which I really enjoy in Accenture,” he says.
“The best thing that we do is change ourselves regularly. We thrive on change. These acquisitions help us continue to be on our toes, bringing in new talent, and looking at the same problem with a different lens.”
Design and innovation firm Fjord joined the Interactive family in 2013 and a year later opened up shop in Australia with Bronwyn Van Der Merwe as employee number one. Van Der Merwe was hired to establish the design capability in Australia and eventually across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
Today she has a dual role as general manager for Fjord APAC and the design lead APAC at Accenture Interactive. Her role for Interactive sees her lead the design teams across the portfolio which includes brand strategy and brand design, and growth, venturing and business design in addition to product and service design.
“It’s a really incredible team and I’m extremely proud and honoured to be part of such a talented group of people,” Van Der Merwe says.
“It’s a really unique set of skills in the market in terms of the breadth of capabilities, but also the scale and the footprint. The combination is just killer.
“The combination of the design and the creativity of the team with the rest of the technology prowess of Accenture Interactive, and then all of the industry depth knowledge of Accenture, it’s a really exciting place to be.”
Getting to where they are now wasn’t necessarily smooth sailing though, she admits. As the first designers in the business, there was a lot of work to be done educating others within Interactive and the broader extended family at Accenture.
“There was a lot of work to be done to educate colleagues around the value of design and what it can bring to clients in terms of helping them to solve their challenges,” she says.
“And really take a much more human-centred and experience-led lens to the work that we do to help our clients transform their businesses and re-imagine whole industries.
“But it took a while to really put in place the right ecosystem and conditions for a design team to thrive.”
Van Der Merwe believes design is only “one piece of the puzzle” for clients. Coming together with the others within the Interactive family helps, she says, helps them live up to what Interactive is all about: reimagining business through experience.
This involves everything from design to brand strategy, comms plan and the right technology and platforms.
“You need all of the bits that we have within Accenture Interactive to actually be able to deliver on the ambition of making a difference in the world and transforming industries and doing this experience for imagination,” she says.
“I think that’s the value. You can create real change and real impact because we have all of these different teams and capabilities.”
Collaboration is part of the DNA
Speaking to each person within the Interactive leadership team, one thing became clear: there is an insatiable hunger to collaborate and make a difference. Collaboration is part of this family’s DNA. With people in all parts of the world and experts in just about any area, a simple idea floated in a meeting could come to fruition overnight.
Alex Glenn, senior director at Accenture Interactive, leads the strategy arm of the business, 2nd Road. The business was acquired by Accenture close to four years ago but only joined the Interactive family in August.
“It felt immediately that it was the home we’d been singing for,” Glenn says.
“I suppose I can appreciate so much of what Interactive offers, because I was trying to help find this position and this opportunity to marry strategy and creative so closely.”
Since then, she has been privy to the innate sense of care and pride the team has to bring ideas to life. She refers to the team as “almost like a collection of entrepreneurs who hustle and think bigger”.
“Most of the people in the team have different spikes and so if you begin to engage with other people, they complement you, it’s not the same,” she says.
“That opens up collaboration that’s not competition, but it’s discovering a really different angle you wouldn’t have otherwise thought about.”
The collaboration is what she says continues to invite freshness to ideas. For Sunita Gloster, a well-known figure in adland and recently appointed senior advisor at Accenture Interactive, this was also one of the most exciting, and in some ways, surprising components to the team.
“Whilst I have known and worked with The Monkeys team for many years, this was my first touchpoint with Accenture Interactive and to start remotely, and during the lockdown, in many ways that shines a greater spotlight on what’s really below the surface,” Gloster says.
“What sets them apart from other service businesses I’ve been part of is the energy and collaboration of its people, locally and globally to making the opportunity, idea or intent not only a reality but a customer experience that is as great as it can be in strategy and execution.
“Unlike other places, the ‘infrastructure’ doesn’t get in the way of doing great work. That’s quite unusual seeing multiple parts of a business coming together to deliver integrated solutions so seamlessly. Here it’s in the DNA.”
Green attests to this as well. While many global businesses talk about having a network or offices all over the world, many don’t actually tap into them. With so many resources and experts at their fingertips, he says there are many avenues to a solution for clients.
“As an international business, you can pick up the phone and find a solution anywhere in the world,” Green says.
“It seems everyone talks about multinationals but it actually does operate like one. They use technology and video to come together in ways even pre-COVID that are really interesting.
“Even the game-changing ideas we’ve been thinking of you can find somehow that it’s been done by Accenture somewhere in the world.”
Creativity and beyond
The start of the year saw the departure of The Monkeys co-founder Justin Drape. He had been working with Green and Nowell for more than two decades and more than ten years as business partners.
“It’s kind of weird not having him around and talking to him about work stuff, but we talk about other things,” Nowell says.
“We’ve been through so much together professionally and personally. We’re always going to be bonded for life by what we’ve done together. I think he has left the company in amazing shape and with an amazing future.”
Drape has been replaced by Tara Ford - a hire that has been highly commended across the industry. Ford, who was previously CCO at DDB Sydney, is an award-winning creative who Nowell says will bring her creative firepower to both The Monkeys and the Interactive team.
“She’s going to bring a whole new energy for a start,” Nowell says.
“She came in and we announced that she was joining as CCO Sydney and [there was] spontaneous applause. It was this fantastic moment.
“You know you’ve made the right choice when you get that kind of spontaneity from all of the staff. It wasn’t just the creative people who know her reputation. She’s such a well-respected figure, a well-liked figure that hopefully she’s going to bring in a whole new energy.”
While Ford doesn’t start in the role until April, she has already been excited about the opportunities she will have working with the Interactive family.
“What I’ve gathered so far is, it’s an incredibly smart bunch of people with incredibly diverse backgrounds, knowledge, skills and that is really exciting,” Ford says.
“I’ve always thought the best work comes from collaboration and the best collaboration is when you do it with people who have different views and different skills.”
When it comes to working within the Interactive family, Ford believes the collaboration that happens between the teams can only be conducive to better results for clients. And with all the innovation, tech and tools available within the consultancy, these will only add value to creativity.
This is what she calls “The Monkeys-plus” and was the reasoning behind her jumping into the CCO role.
“It’s everything that The Monkeys has to offer, which is an incredible business that I have so much respect for Mark, Scott and Justin setting up,” she says.
“And of course the wider team. But it’s everything they have to offer plus. I think that’s going to be killer in the market or I certainly intend it to be.”
Accenture Interactive senior advisor Mark Buckman
What Accenture Interactive apart from other consultancies?
As a former client, I have worked with just about every consulting firm in Australia and abroad. They’re all smart, capable and have their own strengths. Accenture Interactive has emerged as the leading partner in delivering truly end-to-end purpose driven customer experience solutions helping clients to reimagine exceptional customer experiences that drive growth. Accenture Interactive brings together outstanding strategy, design, creative, data, digital, analytics, operations, delivery capabilities… underpinning by a foundation in tech, wrapping them together. And importantly, they’re super smart, really nice, thoroughly decent human beings.
Accenture Interactive senior advisor Sunita Gloster
How is Accenture Interactive paving the way for diversity in the industry?
Accenture commit to the importance of diversity of inputs and belonging - not just gender but ethnicity, LGBTQ+, religion, culture and those with disabilities. At a global level our CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO, CHRO are all female. But, for me equality isn’t a lofty slide in the deck, it can never be a set and forget strategy, nor is it just a numbers game. Accenture encourages change, we rally around #lettherebechange. That sits well with achieving a culture of equality as it needs to be a daily commitment to ensure through every evolving lens people are compensated fairly and equitably and made to feel safe, be seen, heard and feel connected in order to be courageous with their work. Great talent is diverse and it’s attracted to and stays in a culture that respects that. Accenture Interactive work hard at that and I’m very proud to be part of that team.
The Monkeys chief strategy officer Fabio Buresti
How have things changed within the agency since Accenture Interactive purchased The Monkeys?
Being part of the AI family has opened up a whole new world of opportunities for our strategic and creative capabilities. Our brand strategies go way beyond just influencing the comms - they now influence the entire experience being offered. And that’s something that every strategist lives for. I can’t tell you how great it is when you get to deliver strategic thinking that goes beyond the jurisdiction of a traditional agency strategist.
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