GOOD CEOs

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GOOD CEOs is a fortnightly dispatch taken from the front lines of the creative economy: powered by

UNKNOWN – the talent growth consultancy

Every month, my team has over 1000 conversations with top designers, creatives, strategists, founders, and investors. We collate the best bits below;

I really hope you enjoy it.

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Coming up
in this issue
👇

Briefing
A new Cannes award could signal the future of your agency or brand.

Toolkit
How I moved from the death loop to The Infinity Loop.

Closer
Plus: a global sector boom, systems thinking and some must-listens.

BRIEFING / A Lion for the work no-one sees 🦁   
 

Can the world‘s most creative company also be a commercial flop?

WPP was the dominant force at Cannes last summer. The network captured 169 Lions in total, and was declared Creative Company of the Year. But away from the love-in occurring in the French Riviera, there was trouble.

WPP’s commercial performance had been tanking all year.

Judges had lauded the network’s creative output for the last twelve months, but around the same period, its shares had spiralled downward by 65%. Analysts now reckon that it’ll be bumped off its place on the FTSE 100 when trading re-starts on December 22nd.

For the first time in almost thirty years. 😱

Creativity, effectiveness, and a healthy agency bottom line don’t appear to follow a natural chronology anymore. And heavily awarding a company that is at risk from buyout or break-up isn‘t a good look for Cannes, either.

Which is why the festival’s newest award is so smart.

✨ The Creative Brand Lion ✨

It‘s a prize that recognises the systems that drive sustained business success.

According to the organisers: The work should demonstrate how brands strategically use creativity across their organisation to achieve measurable business growth, clear ROI, meaningful audience engagement and long-term brand value.

So what are they looking for, actually?

There are four qualities that judges will… errr... judge.

🖼️ 25% creative innovation & originality

▲ 25% strategic alignment

🤑 25% commercial effectiveness

📈 25% scalability & sustainability

The last point is crucial.

Cannes has been criticised for awarding work that creates short-term buzz, or art for art’s sake. The Creative Brand Lion will only feature work that can demonstrate at least 12 months of implementation that shows ‘systematic impact’.

Simon Cook, Lions’ CEO, said: “The Lion will recognise the visionary brands that are building the systems, cultures and capabilities that make world-class creative marketing inevitable and repeatable - and the practices that transform creative potential into lasting business impact.”

It made me think of a line by Atomic Habits author, James Clear.

That line is essentially the entire Creative Brand Lion in a sentence.

Cannes is formalising something we’ve all felt for years:

It doesn’t matter how good your ideas are if the organisation that’s meant to deliver them is held together by actionless words.

The big evolution agency leaders need means asking a new question (in place of an old one).

From:
‘how bright is the picture?’

To:
‘how strong is the frame?’

This brings me to an idea that saved my business and, probably, life...

TOOLKIT / The Infinity Loop 🪐
 

It‘s a story of...

Three businesses

Two podcasts

and one big blind spot.

Before UNKNOWN saw meaningful lift I was juggling a lot.

• A superfood drink called Rank*

• A mental health T-shirt brand

• And UNKNOWN

*Because the shitter it tastes, the better it must be for you, right?

At the same time – around 2020 – I‘d launched a charity creative agency (GBGB) during Covid that mobilised 2,000 people to help charities losing £4bn a month.

I was also hosting two podcasts – one about building a business and one about the business I was building.

Four things that looked purposeful.

Only one of them made any money.

Only one created jobs.

Only one deserved my attention.

And it was the one I was neglecting the most.

Why?

Because I was relying on instinct – not systems.

Energy – not focus.

This is when I learned about The Infinity Loop.

The brain will always go for the path of least resistance.

So, when you have more than one workstream (I had 5), your brain will naturally pick the task that offers the highest reward for the lowest effort.

The infinity loop is a way to ensure that your efforts compound, and move in a singular direction.

If not, you’re doing 5 things with 20% focus.

This limits your progress, but you feel ‘busy’.

Having multiple workstreams is only smart if they feed each other.

If they don’t, you’re not diversifying – you‘re diluting.

The Infinity Loop is a principle that means every new initiative should strengthen the original business that made the others possible.

Not compete with it.

Not contradict it.

Not make you look two-faced, or duplicitous.

When I finally killed the side projects and doubled down on UNKNOWN – the business and the podcast – we grew from 3 people to 19 in 18 months.

That’s when I finally felt comfortable calling myself a CEO, not a founder with good intentions and terrible prioritisation.

I went from saying yes to most things that excited me, to asking the question: Will this grow me or my business?

So, what does my Infinity Loop have to do with Cannes?

The festival is rewarding exactly what I didn’t understand in my early years:

Focus 🧘‍♂️

Organisational clarity 🔍

Creative capability built into culture and process 👨‍💻

Systems that make great work inevitable, not accidental. On repeat.

This Lion isn’t about the poster or the film or the case study edit. It’s about whether the company behind it is designed in a way that creative excellence can recur.

It rewards brands who:

• Know what produces 80% of their revenue

• Know what will produce 80% of their revenue in three years’ time

• Build internal machines that make creativity a strategic advantage, not a heroic effort

In other words: the Lion for the thing no one sees, but everyone feels.

Why This Matters If You Run a Creative Business

If you‘re a founder or CEO in the creative economy, this new award is a signal:

The industry is moving from awarding brilliance... to awarding the ability to produce brilliance consistently.

Not:
‘we do everything for everyone’

Not:
‘look how many services we can list on a creds deck’

Not:
‘here’s our novelty side-project that confused all our clients’
 

Creativity and capital both reward the same things now: clarity. Alignment. Repeatability.

A Simple Rule I Wish I’d Learned Earlier

Whatever new thing you launch should strengthen the original thing you built.

If it doesn’t, you‘re not innovating – you’re undermining yourself.

And that’s the connection between the messy parable above and the brand-new Creative Brand Lion: Cannes has finally put a spotlight on what actually creates long-term creative value.

Not the story you tell about your work – but the system that allows you to deliver it again and again.

I hope to see WPP returning to form in 2026. In the months between now and Cannes.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we saw work worthy of winning the Creative Brand Lion?

That way, the business won’t just clean up at the festival – it will recover commercially too. And on repeat.

PS: If you’re looking to hire, acquire, restructure or sell, Connect with UNKNOWN.

THE CLOSER / fortnight fuel
 

One stat %
Creativity = global growth

The global creative economy is worth $4.3 trillion, according to the UN. And creative industries account for almost 6.2% of global employment. There are estimates that it could be worth up to 10% of global GDP by 2030, according to G20 Insights.

This makes it a mammoth category: bigger than transport is currently (7%), but slightly smaller than logistics (10.6%), and construction (13%).

Sources: SLOCAT, Statista, World Economic Forum.

One quote 🗣️
Turn the system up

– W. Edwards Deming, American composer and economist

One fix 🛠️
Lucid listens...

Jim Houghton is one of the world’s great M&A advisors. At Waypoint Partners, he has overseen the buying and selling of over 100 creative businesses. Jim joined me on untalented recently to shed some light on...

• What it takes to sell a creative company

• Why UK agencies fear failure

• How creative people are more powerful than they imagine

Watch the interview on YouTube.

For more episodes follow us on Spotify.