Episode 141 / Paul Ward / Havas Studios / Global CEO
Leverage the Village to Offer an End-to-End Service
In his role as Global CEO of Havas Studios, Paul Ward is head of what he calls an “exciting new production agency” bringing together all the creative studios under the Havas brand. He’s dedicated to making creative ideas happen in an efficient and effective way. Paul’s Shiny New Object is leveraging the village – more specifically, bringing together all various experts from within his organisation to create the best team for a client’s needs, specifically when it comes to leveraging data specialists.
Paul’s career has had its fair share of cockups – the worst being adding a few zeros by mistake to a balance sheet in one of his first jobs as a result of a hangover. This brought home the need to find balance: between networking and being sociable, on the one hand, and prioritising the right amount of effort and time for work. He learnt how to make the right decisions the hard way, and early.
Working at BBH, he recalls being taught by the then-CFO that our business is simple and lots of people try to make it complicated. Ultimately, good creative marketing was all about building a team and making sure you managed them well, until more recently when data has begun to play such a huge role.
This is why Paul’s Shiny New Object is leveraging the village. Firstly, it means leveraging the individual talents and specialisms of the people within the organisation and making a team that gives clients any and all of the answers they’re looking for under one roof. Secondly, it also means delving into data specialists and understanding the power of the analytical side and the data driven side of business.
To find out more of Paul’s top marketing tips, how he’d like to be remembered and where he sees the success of leveraging the village take Havas Studios, listen to the podcast.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:18
Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative. And this is a weekly podcast where leaders of the industry discuss the future of the business. And so we can get a sense of their insight and their vision. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Paul Ward, who is Global CEO, Havas Studios. Now, Paul, for those in the audience who don't know who you are and what you do. Could you give us an overview?
Paul Ward 1:19
Sure. Morning, Tom. Thank you. Thank you, again, for inviting me along today. I am the What do I do. So I'm the CEO of Havas Studios, which is an exciting production agency that we set up with within the Havas business. I'm not going to go on about it too long been talking about it for five years, been doing a test studio out of the UK for around two years, three years, actually. But we have studios all over the world. And we did a joint venture partnership with an independent production business, which we announced a few months back. And now what we've done is bring all of our studios all over the world together or sit under me on the one single P&L, and we're all working in the same tech stack, etc. So it's about having this standalone vertical production business that supports our agencies around the world, but also can look after and deal with clients directly. And I keep you know, the opportunity for me is to transform our creative agencies from within because we have to become a business that makes far more than we manage currently. So you know, we were a business that was built around managing third cart parties and working with clients to create campaigns. It's much more now about being a studio about being able to have the people in the business that can actually realize the creative idea and make it as much as anything else.
Tom Ollerton 2:52
And how did you end up doing that, what were the other jobs on the path to global CEO of Havas Studios?
Paul Ward 3:00
That's a good question. Well, I mean, I started off in production, and I've been around in the business for a long time. And I started off in production and worked for 15 years, maybe 15 years in production, I'd say before I moved into kind of operational roles in the UK, and then globally. So I've always had production in the heart as it were. And for the last five years or four years, I've been the Group COO of Havas in the UK. So we're going across, we've got 20 odd agencies in the business, I work across them all and work with the CEOs and the creative leads and the strategists from the business and, and make sure they all work together right and get the best out of the village, which is we call the building that we have all of those agencies within the village and it's about you know, getting the best out of it. So that's been my job for the last five or four years, but then recently, we've started to look at how we can expand this global production offer. And it's something I've just kind of naturally stepped into.
Tom Ollerton 4:12
So you've got to this and have a position in the industry which is fantastic, but I'm assuming there was a few broken eggs along the way. What are those some biggest screw ups that you remember in your career that have made you the man you are today?
Paul Ward 4:27
Well, first of all, there's a lot of them and I think that's it's genuinely made me who I am. I'd say i mean I've definitely made a lot of mistakes in the past and it's about dealing with them. it's interesting, we're talking the day after England were knocked out with the Euros or not knocked out, lost the Euros final and you know, all the narrative over the next few weeks months will be around learning from the mistakes and I think that's it's what you naturally learn as you I grew up in business a sport, I would say I mean, I've probably got two or three cockups over the years. My biggest ever, in my career probably happened in the first few years of my career, and it genuinely woke me up. I worked in an advertising agency in Newcastle, as you may have noticed from the accent, similar accent to yours, working in an agency from Newcastle, it was the best job I'd ever dreamt of getting that job, I was so excited about having that job. But I was in my early 20s, and a bit daft and you know, every night and some nights out for two or three nights on a trot, and work kind of took second place to my life and I was young but I one day, added a couple of zeros by mistake, I can't remember whether I added or took it away. But whatever I exposed the business I was in to a very big, very big write off and got into a lot of trouble nearly got fired pretty much, you know, pretty much was out the door but but managed to charm my way back in. And I did genuinely sit down after that and think actually, work needs to come first. And I don't mean, I don't mean that I kind of pivoted and became the most boring man in the world. But I did start to think about, I started to make decisions around what was happening the next day in the office. And I think as I got older, I probably will I definitely did certainly start to think well hang on a minute. It's Wednesday night. Yes, there's a big party in the office. But I'm presenting to Xyz tomorrow morning. So maybe I should take it easy. And I definitely did start to think more about my professional career than anything else. But equally, I think I got much better recovering after a night out as well.
Tom Ollerton 7:07
It makes me wonder a lot. I don't know why recently, but how many opportunities you miss out on being hung over. I mean, I was cut from a similar cloth, albeit had a very different career path. But it's quite easy for us to say in a certain certain age and say, Well, you know, maybe you shouldn't go out and get hammered every night of the week. Because you know, your work will be worse. Your breath will be worse, you know, mean your career will be worse. But then what else? You know? Are you really gonna stop doing that in your in your mid 20s? You know, like, how would you advise people in that situation to strike the right balance? You know what, because obviously, part of our industry is networking and being out being amongst it and forging those connections. But then how much is too much? And where do you look to your team to draw the line?
Paul Ward 8:00
Balance right? I mean, honestly, we we... have you been Tom, have you been to our office?
Tom Ollerton 8:06
Oh, yeah. Lots of millennials in pink trousers and pictures of basketball and spray paint and there's probably there's probably a barista somewhere I'm at a guess you know, am I right?
Paul Ward 8:17
There's a blog on how to use recaptures. I mean, it's it's the reason I asked you, it's I you know, it is, it's it's a beautiful building. It's very cool. It's, you know, you walk in there and you feel 7ft tall. But we moved into there four years ago, and, and, sorry, there you go, Teams calling. It always happens doesn't it. We moved in there a few years ago, and we really struggled at first to get everybody to integrate, you know, we talked about, you know, we talked about the village and the power of the villages, getting the best out of all the agencies that are in that village. But we really struggled with how can we get everyone to talk more and learn a bit more about what everybody does? And then we did a free bar and then we couldn't stop everybody in the green. It was like all right, that's what we'd be missing. It's just a free bar that gets everyone talking maybe a bit you know too much. But, but it is I mean, a strike a balance. It's all about balance, right? I remember having recently actually. Oh, god I sound like such an old twat saying this. But I was like, you know, I remember what you know you are you're all a bit different. Now. We all seem to go home early. You know, we used to leave work at seven or eight, go to the pub, stay at the pub till God knows what and we'd gone to a club then we'd go somewhere else and then would all get up in the morning come in and start working all over again. And she said, Oh no, we still do that. We just don't invite you for it. I think you can. I feel like having been in this business for such a long time and having seen quite a few very good people either struggle or go off the rails, I feel like I would be able to see the signs nowadays. But then again, God knows God knows. I think it's a balance, as you say, it's about, it's about, you know, it's like managing a teenager, isn't it? If you go over if you if you, if you complain about it too much, they're gonna ignore you. So I think it's just for me is work, work has to come first, because that's your career. And if and I don't mean that, it comes first against the head of family and stuff like that. But it's just like, you have to think when you're making decisions, think about work as one of the first ones.
Tom Ollerton 10:48
So when you've departed this industry, and people are right, in your career arbitrary, as it were, and they are saying all the things about you that they're going to say, what is what is it you want them to be saying about you? How do you want people to remember your career and other than just the free bar I assume?
Paul Ward 11:14
My old boss said to me, Gwyn Jones, to who, it was the superstar CEO in BBH, for many years, and I, you know, worked for him and, and loved working for him. And he put me into a operations job in like a management job and said to me, don't ever change out, the reason why I've put you in this job is for who you are. Don't think you have to be someone else. And that really resonated with me at the time. And because I was conflicted, because I was thinking, right, okay, I've got a different job now, do I have to act differently? And, you know, how am I meant to be and I think that was, it was such great advice. And I've definitely taken that and run with it. I would like to think when I finally leave this business, everyone will obviously immediately forget me, but if anybody goes, remember that Wardy bloke, everyone calls me Wardy, I don't I get introduced to clients and everybody from my you know, every client, every member of the family, everybody goes for Wardy, which is quite hilarious. But I'd like to be remembered as someone that never changed. I didn't I didn't reinvent myself. I didn't try to be somebody else. I just be me. And some hopefully most love it. Hopefully not many hate it. But I you know, I haven't got an edit switch. I I'm very brutally honest with myself and with my colleagues. I say what I think. And I'd like to think most of the time, it makes sense.
Tom Ollerton 13:04
So just before we move on to your shiny new object, I'm curious to know if you have a silver bullet bit of marketing advice, what is that quip or quote or mantra that you find yourself sharing with your team most often?
Paul Ward 13:21
Well, I'll tell you two actually, I'll tell you one, funny one, just because I decided at one stage in my career, like five or 10 years ago, now it is probably close to 10 years ago, I decided I'm going to move to Australia. And a really good mate of mine said to me, the thing is, you're not ready to go to Australia, the work's not amazing. You won't look at the work, you'll look out the window. And I went and spent a few years out there I kind of understood what he meant. And I wasn't ready to. I mean, beautiful as Australia is. And yes, of course there are some lovely clients and they do some lovely work. But I did realize very quickly that I was I was missing the Premier League as it were. So I did come back for that reason. But I would say the best bit of advice I've ever had was probably given to me by Nigel Maile who was the CFO of BBH long standing CFO of BBH. And he once explained to me how simple our business is. And lots of people try and make it complicated and there's genuinely lots of people try and add smoke and mirrors and try to make it complicated but it was and I stressed was because it has changed recently. I'll explain why I think it changed recently. There was very, very simple. You got a scope of work, you build a team you manage that team and you made sure that team utilized properly If you did that, then you good work came out of it, obviously key. But if you if you've managed your scope well and good work came out of it, then it was a very simple and straightforward business, it just continued. And it grew because more clients like the work that you've done, and you'd add more clients, and if you manage them correctly, then you'd grow as a business. If you have too big a team or took too long to do something, or didn't make very good work, then you would shrink as a business. You know, it's very, very simple and straightforward. It was about building a team and making sure you manage them. Well. Simple as that. And it's become more complicated. Because there's, there's now a genuine science to it. And I mean, there's still obviously, there's still all the power of creativity and that I'm never gonna argue that but there is an added science to it that requires investments in tech and stuff like that, which has meant, it's a more complicated business. And, and it's not as kind of simple and straightforward as it used to be, but still very enjoyable.
Tom Ollerton 16:13
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So we're at the halfway stage now. And we're going to talk about your shiny new object, which is one of the oddest titles we've ever had. But hopefully you'll explain this. So you're, you're shiny new object is leveraging the village. What does that mean?
Paul Ward 17:14
Yes. And it's funny, because I realized I said it a few times, because it's like, you know, if you buy a VW camper, you suddenly see them everywhere. You and I talked about it. And then I'm suddenly conscious that I've said it a couple of times. And it's genuinely not a sales pitch. And it's probably not the best description of it, to be honest. I mean, we leverage the village all the time, we have a model...
Tom Ollerton 17:14
Sorry, just please be specific. What do you mean by that just in capturing what you mean, by leveraging the village?
Paul Ward 17:33
Okay, so so we have a model around the world, which is our villages. So you know, back in 2015, when we set up the London agency, or when we, when we took over the London agency, we had agencies all across town in like 12, different places, we moved them all in one HQ in London, and then and then started to work on getting them to deal and work with each other better. And that's when you create the village, right? It's not just putting everybody in a building together, because that's not that's not it, it's when you start to make sure that the people in the business work together. So we, we make sure that the experts, you know, we work out what the expertise is, in each of those agencies, we try and make them less generalist and more specialists. And then we get them to start to work with one another and cherry pick the best of each other. So our client and come in the front door and say, Hello, Max client, I want a fully integrated team across these different areas. Can you do it? Yes, we can, we will pull different people in I say on a bungee rope, you know that pull in work with a client a bit, then they go back to that the job. So that's how we leverage the village, it's about the client doesn't have to appoint anyone agency, they can appoint the building. And we just bring the experts in and out as we go. And that's what I mean by by leveraging the village. However, that's not my shiny new object. Because that is what we do. That's what you know, that is what they're that's the if, if you go back and find quotes from Chris or Yannick or any of our previous CEOs in the UK or anywhere in the world, they'll talk about you know, the village and about how we get the best of each other. What I've started to noodle with in recent times, and it's it's been since we started to build out this content business is leveraging the power of the analytical side of the village and the data driven side of the village and the data scientists and that bunch of people which there are a lot of them in our business and they sit in five or six different agencies. The very nature of their role means they are siloed within their business, you know, I'm very rarely as a client going to go, what I need is a data scientist from the CRM business and a data scientist in the media business to sit down together and try and work on this for me, we rarely get those briefs. But there's an opportunity in recent times, which is lots more of our clients are starting to go direct to consumer, they want to build out their ecommerce sites and, you know, build their own rather than rely on the likes of Amazon and stuff like that.
And then wanting to drive and understand the performance of that content in an in a conversation with a client, which was around, you know, can we should we be working with you to build out a content studio, that helps you create, if you're, you know, if you're a client selling widgets, then you're trying to sell those widgets in the likes of tescos. But you're trying to sell them in Amazon, you're trying to sell them in your site, you're trying to sell them everywhere. And, and you know, the really good ones have got some branding across all of their elements of comms. So you look at their how to videos, you look at everything that they do, and it all looks connected, it's all been thought about, they all look similar. And that's like 1000s of pieces of content. So I hadn't started having a conversation with a client around that. And then we got into quickly this kind of, but what if then that Performance Team, then sat within that studio and really started to pull in data from everywhere. So not, you know, you've got clients go, and yes, we're pulling in data from our social offering. Yes, you've got clients go, and we're pulling it, you know, we've got a media team that are pulling in data from the media business, but what if we started to pull it in from their own sites, whatever we can get out of the likes of Amazon, whatever we can get from media trading, and buying teams, whatever we can get from our monitoring and social businesses. You know, what, what can we get from even down to which assets our different markets use and stuff like that. So it's about, it's about getting four or five experts from their own area who were all in data in that space and talking to each other. And we genuinely we've never done it before. And we're starting to do it now. And there's something being between building a shiny new object, which will be a proper content measurement tool. And, you know, I mean, from, from various different angles, and it's, I am very excited about it. I don't fully understand it yet, but I'm very excited about it.
Tom Ollerton 21:21
So I get the the dream of pulling all these people on bungee ropes and getting them together to come in and work periodically on a on an issue or a problem or a brief and I get the the idea that but it's part of our business as well as helping clients with with with D2C. But isn't the best solution, just the client doing that themselves ? Essentially, it's any common theme, let's call it a D2C is it this is called what it is ecommerce, right? Which is the ability of getting some kind of product deal offer in front of someone and getting them to execute on that ask or that ad. On our site somewhere. That's what it is and see some sort of fancier description of it. But ultimately, it is. It is measurable. It's about clicks. It's about volumes. It's arguably not that much art in some of this. Shouldn't that be with an elite ecomm team within the brand itself?
Paul Ward 24:02
Yeah, it should. And, funnily enough, that was the conversation I was having with client x, as it were, I mean, it's not, you know, I'm not daft enough to think that any client is going to go hang on some kind of spouting God waving his arms around, I'm going to believe him and throw everything into one basket with him. It's never going to happen. No, it's not. So it was around going. I mean, this is it was a really interesting conversation because it started off by around the frustration around her demanding innovation from her, one of her teams that worked for us, and that's how I ended up in the room because she'd been asking for more innovation and, and didn't feel we were given her. I mean, I know it's kind of a hard ask sometimes. But it's sometimes take Somebody my level which I've got sales, like wonky, I don't mean to say that but somebody who sits above it and can look across the businesses rather than being the silo of any one agency to go hang on a minute, the question that she's asking is bigger than that one single agency, it's,yes, she can build a shit hot, ecommerce team, and they will really start to be able to leverage a lot of areas, but actually, there will be areas they don't understand. And inevitably, because I've got 21 agencies in our building, or 20, whatever, I never 20 something agencies in our building, we will have people somewhere that work in part of the business that actually can add value to that now. Maybe they could just go and get it from somewhere else, sure, they could but they work with us, and we've got it. So why don't we offer it? so it's just about is genuinely about me creating, you know, I've got a global production business, it's about content at scale, with working with clients around creating meaningful content in all different mediums. The natural I feel offer for me is to create a content measurement tool that can sit across not just ecommerce, but across other areas of content. And that's how I've got into thinking about this. And that's why I'm trying to build my shiny new tool.
Tom Ollerton 26:32
So we're gonna leave it there. So anyone who's listening to this podcast, and they're dying to get in touch with you, how would you like them to do that?
Paul Ward 26:40
I forgot about this. My email, my email is Paul.Ward@havas.com so that's reasonably straightforward. And on Twitter, tune Paul ward.
Tom Ollerton 27:10
And if someone wants to write you, what captures your attention?
Paul Ward 27:16
Well, I'm sure that you tell me I got hundreds of people writing to me on on, on LinkedIn, in particular on a daily basis, and I very rarely read them all because there's so many. Certainly not Hey, Paul, how are you? when people try and befriend you through what would catch my eye. Now, I'd say, I heard your podcast and I think I've got something for you. I read through them all. And if something really jumps out, I do follow up. But I, I feel 95% of the stuff that I get sent is just delete.
Tom Ollerton 28:01
Well, I always think that it's like dating, right? You know, you need or you need most of you dates to be awful for the one really good one to stand out. Right?
Paul Ward 28:10
That's a very good call. Yeah. Very true.
Tom Ollerton 28:13
Well, Paul, I don't think I feel comfortable enough calling you Wardy. But either way. Thanks. Thank you so much.
Paul Ward 28:20
Thanks, man. I really enjoyed it.
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