Emma Montgomery, the new CEO of Leo Burnett Australia, was in Los Angeles where she was global co-chief strategy officer for TBWA/Worldwide when the change and uncertainty of the pandemic took hold.
She had recently moved to the west coast of the US after being president and chief strategy officer at Leo Burnett in Chicago.
“On a really personal level, last year really rocked me,” she told AdNews.
“I had a fantastic job, I'd been in the US for a really long time and I've never been more homesick in my life.
“It was the absolute yearning to be among your people. I think a lot of people had a real reset moment last year and I definitely did, and I needed to be home, that was in my bones.
“I really needed to be back and to feel grounded. And I think with so much change and uncertainty, that was a real drawing for me.”
She had been talking to Melinda Geertz, the long-serving CEO of Leo Burnett in Australia, for a long time about an opportunity.
“Leo is in my bones, it's like that's my absolute heart and I think it's the best job in the world,” she says.
“The opportunity to pick up from someone that I respect so much and love the way that she leads and to have an opportunity to come back into that role, I think those two things really fell at the same time.
“It's a homecoming in two ways for me, back to a brand that I absolutely know and love and have such an affinity for, and that sense of place. Unashamedly I needed to come home.”
Coming back to Sydney, she had to go through quarantine alone at the Sofitel Wentworth.
“I come at it from a very privileged position in that I came home with a job and I was quarantined by myself,” she says. “My husband came a couple of weeks before I did.
“If you can do it by yourself and you are gainfully employed, it is the Zenist experience of life because people bring you food and you're stuck in this room. You can't go anywhere, it's just you and your thoughts.
“I got up and I did Pilates every day and I read books, it was like a little detox for me. And I found it really meditative, actually a very worthwhile experience.
“But I do recognise that a lot of people are coming back with their families and it's quite a different experience.”
Coming with fresh eyes, she compared Australia to the US experience where the coronavirus is causing huge disruption to lives and people aren't looking out for one another.
“You come back to Australia and you get off the plane and everybody here's concerned about you and that's quite nice,” she says.
“I think that kind of community feel, the fact that we can have a lockdown and by and large people will respect it and want to do right by each other. That's a good feeling.”
She has moved back to the house she had before moving to the US but her furniture has yet to catch up.
“I have this chair and I have a mattress and that's it,” she says via Microsoft meetings. “I'm pretty excited for my things to arrive. They've been caught up in a global shipping debacle. By the time they get here it'll have taken nearly six months to ship them.”
And then there is the challenge of a new job and making contact with clients and with staff.
“It's a different dynamic trying to learn a client's business when often you've not met them physically,” she says.
“Everything's got to get scheduled which I think is a little bit tricky, there's less room for spontaneity.
“We're still trying to balance that and figure out how to do this in a new world. And especially in lockdown.
“The challenge to our staff is how to not have them work 24/7 because I think you fill the time and we get real busy, real fast, and that's not good for anybody.?
The future
She thinks Australia has challenges ahead.
“In the US I think the pandemic surfaced things that are fundamentally broken in that country, like the huge disparities in income and healthcare and some of the real structural inequalities.
“The US is going to come out of this and they've already talked about the roaring '20s, and you can see that pent-up demand.
“We've got a real leadership gap at the moment and that's a real challenge. I think you've got people who are being faced with some significant challenges, and I think the path is unclear.
“There's an opportunity for some fresh thinking to ask ‘what is the future of Australia, of the ad industry, all of it? What's the individual's future? What's my job going to be when I come out of this pretty weird moment?’
“But I also think that it's poked some holes in where there isn't a plan and that's what I find a little concerning about what's going to happen after this. You're going to have all these businesses shut and then what happens? What's going to stimulate the economy? I think that'll be our next big challenge.
“It's a really cluttered market vying for a shrinking pot of pretty much the same work. And I think the challenge is where will growth come from? Where will our diversification come from?
“There's a lot of really, really good agencies and a lot of really good competitors, and there's only so much work and there's only so many clients.
“And for every new independent agency that takes one client, that's a client out of the market. And I think what we need to do is be much clearer on why do you buy us, what's our distinct difference, both I think as an industry and certainly as a company.
“Comparing my experience, I think the US has a much broader marketing sphere. You've got a lot more specialisms, you've got a lot more I think happening to really expand where marketing can go, it's much closer to business. And I think here that's the opportunity, but it's really only the big brands that are doing that, it's not the standard fare for everyone.”
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