Possibly the most hireable CEO?
 

There aren’t many people who have seen the creative industry from as many vantage points as Lisa de Bonis.

From Mother and Work Club to Havas and Accenture Song. She helped lead the transformation of Huge – as documented in Michael Farmer’s excellent Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and the Redefinition of the Ad Agency Business – and is now helping to shape the future of the marketing industry as UK managing partner and CEO of The Brandtech Group.

We spoke about what it means to change an agency’s business model while keeping the lights on, finding the right home for a creative company, and why an industry racing to master technology needs to get better at understanding people.

Ollie Scott: You’ve worked across almost every corner of this industry – Mother, Work Club, Havas, Accenture Song, Huge and now The Brandtech Group. It’s a perfect squiggly career. Which period are you most proud of?

Lisa De Bonis: It’s going to be the one you didn’t reference! My first job in the industry was in Paris, at a creative agency called BDDP & Fils. It was important because it was the result of failure. I had finished university in the UK, did the rounds trying to get an agency job – then didn’t quite make the cut. So I packed my bags and went to Paris without a job. I hustled, got some temporary work and ended up learning the trade in a foreign language. It was hustle, resilience, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable all the time. I was in that role when Robert Saville, founding partner at Mother approached me. The rest is history.

OS: I sense a rare level of self-belief when I speak to you. It takes a certain level of madness, talent or bravery to do that. Where did it come from?

 
I am used to constant change
and situations that are
uncomfortable or unfamiliar
 

LDB: I was lucky with my upbringing. My father was a mechanical engineer who believed in hard work (he was the kind of person who thought that to be on time, you had to be early). My mother is originally from Chile and emigrated to Texas. They were always hardworking and had strong values. And our life was very international. When you’re exposed from a young age to different cultures, languages and backgrounds, that becomes normal. I don’t have some self-belief that I can do anything, but I am used to constant change and situations that are uncomfortable or unfamiliar.

OS: Who has made the biggest impression on your career?

LDB: John Claydon, who was chairman of Work Club. He remains a mentor and a friend. He always saw the next thing. When we were at Work Club, he was telling me: ‘It’s all about data. It’s all about tech. You need to get yourself out there and do more PR.’ And I’d say: ‘But I don’t like self-promotion.’ He’s also one of those real feminists. He comes from a different time, but he’s one of the most modern, creative and alternative thinkers I’ve come across. He’s always been a real support and guide to me.

OS: You’ve moved from big advertising into digital innovation. Is there one piece of work from that journey you’re most proud of?

LDB: During the Work Club era, we made something for Durex called SI, which stood for sexual intelligence. It was essentially a personal digital sex guru, powered by AI, that would answer teenagers’ questions and insecurities. We rolled it out in Russia (of all markets). The ideas we’d come up with were so ahead of their time. That particular idea would thrive now, because it was so strategically sound. Durex wanted to be a trusted adviser to teenagers. There was insight work with Google showing that they were using porn to get their information, because they weren’t going to ask their friends or parents.’

OS: Do you remember how you came up with the idea itself?

LDB: I remember exactly. Walking to work, on the phone with Andy Sandoz (founder & creative partner). I may have been walking the dog. All the clichés: walking to my start-up with my dog and my creative on the phone. It epitomises that moment. I’m a strategist, a businessperson, a creative entrepreneur – whatever you want to call me. I wasn’t a ‘creative’ as it was defined back then. But we’d reached a point where ideas like that could come to life because the technology, society and culture were getting there.

OS: Let’s move to Huge. I first contacted you after reading Michael Farmer’s book, Madison Avenue Makeover, about changing the agency’s commercial model. You were productising a service business. When did that start?

LDB: The process started in September 2021. The first thing we did was work with The Business Model Company to build the case for change. Through that programme, we started productising the offering.

 
All the clichés: walking
to my start-up with my dog
and my creative on the phone
 

OS: Looking back, what worked? And what would you advise an agency founder going through it now?

LDB: The business and its people got three major things out of the process: a more commercial mindset, new capabilities and a culture shift. It’s about mindset and model. If you don’t change the mindset, you won’t change the model. The process gave us an agency that could prove the value of design and creativity. Specifically, data and eventually AI. We hired a new leader and built a capability that developed our platform. That made our strategy work more tech-enabled and helped us build the case for creativity. The commercial model was at the heart of it. We started selling and pricing differently. But I think the biggest change was culture.

OS: What did that culture change involve?

LDB: We needed a whole set of new conversations. We became much more transparent about where we were as a business. Our people needed to understand how we made money, where we weren’t making money, and why making money mattered for their career growth and their craft. We reinforced the importance of being client-centric and outcomes-driven. Don’t just tell me how beautiful this website is or how important the craft is. Why are we building it? Why are we designing this app or platform in this way? What are we trying to achieve for the customer, the brand and the client?

OS: Changing a business of that scale is risky. We changed our model at UNKNOWN, but we’re twenty people. There are fewer employees and mortgages to think about, and no holding company expecting profits to keep going up. Were there red lights on the dashboard telling you there was no alternative? Or was this a bet on where the industry was heading?

LDB: Both. That’s why the case for change is so important. Ours was based on threat and opportunity. Growth was flatlining. We could see that what had got us there wasn’t going to take us forward. We needed to change.

OS: And the pitfalls?

LDB: We did too much, too fast. We didn’t always meet the market and our clients where they were. For some, it worked. But you can’t transform everything inside out, all at once. Caroline Johnson, founder of The Business Model Company had a great way of putting it: ‘how do you rewire the house while keeping the lights on?’

OS: Is Huge still using that commercial model today?

LDB: You’ll need to ask them.

 
We could see that what
had got us there wasn’t going
to take us forward
 

OS: IPG had owned a stake in Huge since 2008, then in 2024 it decided to sell. You’d transformed Huge’s business, changed the model, and suddenly you were looking for an acquirer. I can’t imagine that was on your bingo card when you became CEO. How did it feel?

LDB: The feeling was: ‘OK, let’s go.’ We’d built stronger capabilities, a stronger commercial grounding, culture and story. When I took over as CEO, we had the evidence to reposition as experts in intelligent experience – to own the AI narrative in the context of customer experience. Those learnings, together with the leadership team I’d built and nurtured, were what I believe made the case for private equity to buy the business.

OS: A lot of our readers will be considering selling their own agencies. What did the search for investors and acquirers teach you?

LDB: That when you have the right team around you, you can do anything. Three people in particular: my CFO, Urvashi Shivdasani, who is now at R/GA; my chief people officer, Adrienne Imbriaco; and my Chief Product Officer, Chidi Achara, who was critical to refining the strategy, positioning and sales pitch with me. Having a strategic, entrepreneurial CFO as your partner was essential. She came from outside our industry, too. I couldn’t have done it without them. They remain dear friends.

 
Having a strategic,
entrepreneurial CFO as
your partner was essential
 

OS: How did you decide what kind of buyer you wanted? Another holding company, a consultancy, a large independent or private equity?

LDB: Philippe Krakowsky, the CEO of IPG, asked for my recommendation. I don’t know whether it influenced the process or whether he was already there, but I was very clear: either a strategic buyer or private equity – capital in some shape or form. Those were the options we explored.

OS: In a way, you got both with AEA Investors. There was already the merger with Hero Digital in the picture, which made it strategically interesting. How much does it matter that an investor understands your business? These are finance people who might also invest in health tech, pharma and all sorts of other industries.

LDB: It does matter. I have a lot of respect for our investors and left on extremely good terms. I think they’re quite unusual, and an exception to what I’m about to say. But if you asked for my advice to an agency looking for private equity backing, my answer would actually be: don’t do it.

OS: For real?

LDB: Yes, private equity is under pressure itself. I think one reason it’s coming into our industry is that it’s looking for new ways to invest and grow. Tech-enabled professional services, which was essentially our category, looks like an interesting bet. But the private equity clock usually runs on a three-to-five-year timeframe. Creativity doesn’t necessarily compound on that timetable. Before this experience, I might have said that private equity doesn’t value creativity. That’s not true. It does, but it sees creativity as an asset. What investors sometimes struggle to understand is the process that produces it.

OS: Let’s talk about Brandtech. You could have gone almost anywhere after Huge. Why there, and what has surprised you?

LDB: Honestly, if I stayed in the industry, Brandtech was the only option I was interested in. I wanted to stay very tech-forward, but ultimately I’m always about creativity. Scale mattered. I wanted something bigger than Huge, but perhaps not as big as Accenture. I thrive in genuinely global businesses. I could sense Brandtech was moving into a wave of accelerated growth, and I wanted to be part of it.

OS: And the surprise?

LDB: The lack of fear around technology. I’d seen the power of Pencil (the GenAI operating system for marketing) from the outside, but every day I’m surprised and grateful for the curiosity and willingness to embrace it. People’s greatest frustration is wanting more access and more tools. Technology is seen as the thing that catapults thinking and creativity. I love it. It’s great energy, and it’s what we need in the business.

 
We’re constantly training
ourselves, our clients and
their agency partners in
what’s now possible.
It fuels a culture of curiosity,
humility and hustle
 

OS: That goes back to culture. A business can say its strategy is to become tech-enabled, but it’s difficult if its deep roots aren’t there. With Brandtech, was that in the DNA from the start?

LDB: Saying in 2015 that technology would make marketing better, faster and cheaper wasn’t very popular. But it’s paid off. We work with incredible brands at massive scale: Unilever, Diageo, BMW, Barclays, L’Oréal, Coty. All powered by this product we have in Pencil. It’s about outcomes, speed and always learning. Every week, the roadmap gets richer and the product gets better. We’re constantly training ourselves, our clients and their agency partners in what’s now possible. It fuels a culture of curiosity, humility and hustle. To stay a step ahead, you have to keep learning.

OS: The rhetoric is that AI takes jobs and more technology means fewer people. You’re a tech-enabled marketing group with seven thousand employees. Why do you need that many?

LDB: First, we’re over a billion dollars in revenue, so we operate at substantial scale. One of our capabilities comes from Oliver, a pioneer in in-housing: designing operating models and setting up marketing functions for clients. That requires people to go into those businesses, help run their marketing and transform it through AI. Pencil is called Pencil because its purpose is to be a tool for human creativity. That purpose carries on. We’ll always need people to unlock technology’s potential.

OS: Let’s move into your predictions. What’s first?

LDB: I think the sea of sameness is going to get worse before it gets better. At Work Club we used to say: ‘everything moves more slowly than I think’. But now the cost of production and exploration has collapsed. So we’ll have more people doing more of the same things, faster. The volume will go up another few notches and distinction will go down. We’ll have to hold our breath and get through that. Our focus at Brandtech will be cutting through it.

OS: What’s your second prediction?

LDB: The second is a return to brand and creativity. And they are not in opposition to technology, for God’s sake. Let’s focus on the idea. What is the distinctive organising thought for a brand? How do we build brands in today’s era? That conversation will come to the fore again. And the calibre of execution will reach stratospheric, Hollywood-like levels because the cost has come down so much.

OS: And your third prediction?

LDB: This might be a hope, but I think the business model will catch up with the shift. When the cost of production collapses and the market realises it needs differentiation to cut through and grow, there will be renewed value placed on thinking and ideas. Also on the transformation services that make this work at scale. We’re back to people and change management. The conversation about value and outcomes will get sharper. For those of us who aren’t necessarily directly in media, the relationship between the idea, the thinking, the craft and the sale becomes easier to attribute. We can prove the value of the thinking faster. That’s what it’s about.

OS: There’s a smaller gap between the creative idea and the sale. That’s really interesting. One final question: is there a quote that has guided your life?

LDB: I don’t let quotes guide my life. My values guide my life: integrity and joy. And keeping perspective. I don’t know if that’s a value, but recognising where we’re placed in the world and keeping things in perspective is very healthy.

 
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And if there’s a decision you’re wrestling with, hit reply. I’d love to tackle it in a future episode.

 
 
Ollie

See you in a fortnight!