Branding design agency Principals hasn't followed the usual path of an independent: Startup; Building the business; Selling to a bigger agency group.
The ideas-led agency started 28 years ago as a straight advertising outfit, with Coles Myer as the first clients.
And it has kept reinventing itself and rejuvenating by offering ownership to rising stars.
Hamish Cargill, director of XXVI, Principals' brand language arm, and Tim Riches, group strategy director, have started a journey to become major shareholders.
This allows current owners to sell down, pull out capital, and pass the baton to the next generation.
“Creative agencies and independent agencies tend to be framed in terms of starting up and scaling up rather than sustaining,” says Riches.
“At Principals about six years ago, a really serious effort went into designing a mechanism by which people could buy into the business, an orderly, transparent and robust way to sustain individuals.”
This is a way to keep a brains trust, rather than losing key people to other agencies.
“Hamish and I went to a new business meeting the other day with two other colleagues and we were all able to introduce ourselves as principals of the business,” says Riches (pictured right).
“If you can get that stability from the senior people who tend to attract the work into the business … that's the key thing that we've really been good at.”
“Clients come in because they want to work with individuals and so you get the sustained presence of the individual in the company, which builds the reputation of the company.”
Riches says this is the first business he’s had an ownership stake in after 30 odd years in the industry.
The business also has no big stars.
Hamish Cargill (right) says no individual has been bigger than the business itself.
“That lack of really, that lack of ego amongst senior players has been a big contributor to who's stayed and thrived,” he says.
“There’s a willingness to work together to put the best interests of the business ahead of their own sometimes.”
One great part of working at Principals is its flat structure.
“There's no distance between the person who's the newest to the company and directors or the CEO,” says Cargill.
“We're all heading in that same direction.”
Riches sees Principals as an independent, locally-owned and distinctly different from the big multinational single discipline places he’s worked at.
“Branding as an area is inherently broad. You're in a business that touches nearly all parts of our clients' business.
“The brand strategy, and the brand identity wraps around the whole of your client organisation … but it also gets applied to culture and we do things like EVP (employee value proposition).”
“The nature of the practice of branding is that there's always something new and more that across a really broad field of things.
“It's inherently stimulating. It's a great area in which you can if you want to expand your capability and bolt on some new subject matter experts which is what we have done in areas like employer brand or in research.
“You've got this thing that you can shape and build on and improve with a really high level of freedom on autonomy.
“It's really unlike any of the multinational branding comms or research agencies that I've worked in.”
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