Dom Megna, Nicole Miranda, Ben Willee.
The founders of independent agency Spinach have stepped aside after 25 years and appointed a managing director and two executive directors to run the agency.
Director of client services Nicole Miranda, a former head of marketing at Liquorland, is managing director, general manager Ben Willee is executive director of media and data, and Dom Megna, formerly of CHEP, is executive creative director.
Spinach was formed in 1999 when Craig Flanders left as managing director of FCB Melbourne with creative director Frank Morabito. Founding clients included Heinz, Scholl, Durex, Converse, Melbourne Airport and Renault.
Both put down the move to a family history of working for yourself, in small business and in real estate, a culture of backing yourself and looking after your team.
“We learned our way working at FCB. We got all the right training, a lot of good experience, and then we thought: Now's the time to go out on our own,” said Morabito.
“It was a pretty tough time. 1999 wasn't exactly the easiest time in the world but we got through it and picked up a couple of decent accounts quickly. Then it grew from there.
“One of the things we've been good at is staying ahead of the curve and always looking forward, always thinking about where we're going to go next.
“And we've always done that, even through the whole digital revolution stuff, we were always thinking about, how do we actually handle this?”
Flanders recalls attending a global managing director conference when at FCB.
“And I came back and said to Frank: Why are we wasting our local client relationships on these bozos?’
“We've all come out of an international agency background in one way or the other.
“They're great training grounds, and it's always good to practice with somebody else's money before you do it on your own. So we should be thankful.”
Ben Willee said Spinach was probably the first independent agency to do automated trading and buy digital ads programmatically.
“We have that absolute flexibility to do what was right for our clients without having to worry about which media owner was going to pay us, because we were getting paid by our clients," he said. "And that's a difference between the Indies and the big networks; the networks are paid by the media, the Indies are paid by their clients.
“I started my career in an integrated agency, and I've seen the power for clients when you've got creative people, media people, strategy, production, all in one room, bashing their heads together.
“And it was in many ways a disaster when media agencies moved down the road because clients all of a sudden had another set of agencies with a whole different approach to things to manage, and some of those agencies didn't always have their best interests at heart.
“The joy for me was coming back into an environment where the client might have briefed us on a radio ad and left with an electronic direct mail, or vice versa. That flexibility to cast off the shackles of international processes and bullshit was incredibly liberating, and it's still liberating and it's still beneficial to our clients.”
Rather than finding a retirement spot after handing over to the new team, Flanders and Morabito will still come into the office most days but leave the running of the business to the team.
“I’m not sitting on the beach,” Flanders said. “I'm here most days in most weeks and Frank is as well.
“We're not cutting the ties anytime soon. We're just realizing that it's time for a bit of generational change, and we're really looking forward to what these three very smart people can do for the business.”
The triangle of three in the leadership have been running things for a few months now.
“We're quite agile and we can make decisions very quickly,” said Nicole Miranda, the managing director.
“We all sit in the same little area. We've got great experience across media creative and account management and client side backgrounds.
“Lots of people use the word ‘integration’ but for us it is truly how we work and operate, and we try to lead by example.
“The fact we've got such rounded skill sets and backgrounds and work very closely together is a bit of a sweet spot for us.
“We're going to harness that and make sure that we're having the right conversations as quickly as we need to have them, while keeping an eye on what we can do in the future.
“No one knows where our industry and our clients' needs are going to go. We'll ask the question on what do we see the vision being for the next 25 years?
“We’ve just got to keep our eyes on the prize, keep ahead of the game and keep pedalling as fast as we can to stay ahead of it. The three of us with that trust and agility and ability to make quick decisions. That'll be the ticket.
“We're pretty open and honest at Spinach. We all work together. We roll our sleeves up and get into it, muck into it and solve problems together.”
Relationships are the key as they were 25 years ago at the start of Spinach.
And Ben Willee describes pitching as helping to fill a leaky bucket.
“Working in an advertising agency, for whatever reason, clients leave, businesses change.," he said. "You've always got to be filling that bucket from the top.
“And we look to get new business in a whole host of different ways. I think what's really interesting about this place is we really qualify who we go after and who we work with, because not all clients are right.
“A key part of our really good staff retention is we're not a multinational who goes in for every pitch that ever existed on the slim chance they might get it. We're very clear about the type of clients who are right for us and who we want to work with going forward.
“I remember in my first three months of Spinach we turned away more pitches than I turned away in three years in a global agency.
“A lot of what we're doing is a bit like dating and long term relationships and you know very early on if someone has different values to you, and if someone has a different expectation of the relationship to you.”
Dom Megna, the executive creative director, said clients are always looking for outsized impact and returns.
“They want an aggressive agency in their corner to get them there," he said. "Fighting harder is the philosophy for creative as much as it is for every other department.
“We fight harder for engaging ideas, nurturing them, protecting them, fighting harder to create moments and memory structures for brands and fighting harder for client success. I expect our people to burrow very deeply into our clients' business.”
Client Transurban, a transportation company, partnered with Spinach almost ten years ago.
“When our partnership with Spinach began in 2016, the marketing environment we operated in looked very different and was predominantly focused on things like local press ads,” said Chris Jackson, general manager, customer experience & operations, Transurban.
“Since then, we’ve collaborated with Spinach on a wide range of initiatives, such as data-driven targeting, personalisation and app downloads. This has helped us expand our reach while also deepening engagement with our customers.
“We congratulate Spinach on their 25th anniversary and look forward to discovering new ways to achieve success together.”
A newer client is Haymes Paint.
“We are relatively new to their client list, but we are working together very well,” said sales director Matthew Haymes
“We selected Spinach to be our communications partner after an extensive review during the first half of last year. Because of their depth of experience in creative and media, coupled with their no bullshit style, they are the perfect partner for our business, Haymes Paint.”
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