Nick Andrew Is Stepping Up At AMV BBDO

Nearing his 18th year at AMV BBDO, Nick Andrew steps into the role of managing director — a natural progression for someone who knows the agency’s rhythms, challenges and creative ambitions better than almost anyone.

Practically his entire career in advertising has been spent at the Omnicom-creative agency, passing from leadership to leadership as he graduated through the ranks, developing a reputation forged through deep partnership, creative ambition and a relentless commitment to developing people.

Reporting to CEO Xavier Rees, he has been tasked with helping to shape the future of the agency — strengthening culture, accelerating integration across departments and ensuring that AMV Group remains a destination for outstanding talent and world‑class creativity.

“Nick’s track record speaks for itself. Highly effective, highly creative work for clients who love working with him; plus a deep love and understanding of how the agency lives and breathes. I’m confident Nick will craft a company culture that ensures a successful next chapter for AMV BBDO,” says Xavier Rees of his new managing director.

A former head of account management and a graduate of The Marketing Academy’s year‑long leadership programme, Andrew holds a people‑first philosophy which he believes helps create the conditions for creativity to flourish and ensuring great ideas translate into meaningful results for clients.

For the past seven and a half years he has led the agency’s gilded Guinness business, overseeing breakthrough work that helped change the brand’s commercial trajectory including becoming the number‑one selling beer in Great Britain for the first time in its history. The work also earned the brand two 2024 IPA Awards, including Gold and the President’s Prize for Next Generation Brand Building. This year he also led AMV BBDO’s successful Baileys pitch, expanding the agency’s relationship with Diageo into spirits for the first time.

Here Andrew discusses his time at the agency, the changes and evolution as well as what to expect from him in his new role as managing director.

Congrats on the new role - what are your responsibilities as managing director?

My biggest priority is continuing to drive true integration across our agency cohorts. The merger may feel like old news, but it was only seven months ago — and we’re still bringing together brilliant people from FCB, Redwood, MullenLowe and a new leadership team.

My focus is twofold: First, making sure these teams feel genuinely unified. Second, setting the agenda for what the future agency should be — combining the best of our people, processes and cultures.

Having been here a long time, it also matters to me that we protect what has always made AMV special, while embracing the new inputs and opportunities that will help us grow this year and beyond.

I think integration — across our agency partners and our internal departments — is going to be crucial. We’re not a siloed agency, but silos can creep in, and a recent all hands meeting was a good reminder: the design team said they’d love more time with strategy. Even the basics of making sure disciplines talk to each other and understand one another matters.

The other priority is setting a stronger cultural agenda. Beyond integration and helping people get the best from each other, it’s about defining what the future AMV should feel like — in a way that excites people. Xav [Rees] described it as being responsible for agency progression and culture: how we move forward together, and how we keep this a place where people want to work and can build long, fulfilling careers, as I’ve been lucky enough to do.

You’ve been at AMV for coming up to 18 years – What’s kept you there?

I remember interviewing here back in 2008–09, doing the graduate rounds at lots of agencies. Walking into 151 felt different: you were surrounded by the best in the business — brilliant people, incredible clients, outstanding work — but also an atmosphere of kindness and genuine encouragement. Other agencies felt like they were trying to catch you out; AMV felt like it wanted you to succeed. That stuck with me.

I’ve been lucky over the last 16–17 years to keep growing through new opportunities — different clients, categories and teams, plus passion projects like the Museum of Childhood and Young V&A, which were always hugely rewarding.

Around the seven‑year mark, I wanted to move into a departmental role and became deputy head of account management alongside Hannah Penn — like playing doubles with Serena Williams every day. We ran the department for a few years, including the tough COVID period, which was challenging but a huge learning curve.

When you’ve been somewhere this long, you work with many different leaders, each with their own style and priorities. You learn from all of them, and that keeps things fresh. After the department role, I wanted to broaden my client portfolio, run more pitches and get involved in new business, which I’ve been able to do over the last couple of years.

Eventually, I felt the pull back to the centre of the agency — which led to conversations with Xav and later Katie about what could be next, and the role I could play in shaping the new AMV.

Did you always want to work in advertising and if so why?

I didn’t know a single person in advertising. For a long time I thought I wanted to be a sports journalist, but I quickly realised it wasn’t for me.

I studied Italian at university, mainly because I was obsessed with Italian football in the ’90s and early ’00s. I watched Football Italia religiously on Channel 4, and when my careers advisor asked what my dream job was, I said I wanted to work for a football club. So I wrote to every club in Serie A. The only one that replied was Juventus.

I offered to work for free, and they happened to be launching an English‑language website. They needed someone to translate content, so I joined for a season — the same season they won Serie A and were relegated for match‑fixing. Quite the year. I lived in Turin during the Winter Olympics too, surrounded by incredible sport and an amazing city.

While at Juventus, I met people from Sky, applied, and became a runner and production assistant. I loved the creative process and the making of things, but working every Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday night was brutal. What I did know was that I enjoyed creativity and media — and someone (I genuinely can’t remember who) suggested I try advertising.

I applied to all the grad schemes, visited a few agencies, and AMV was the one that instantly felt special. I knew the moment I walked through the doors that I wanted to be part of it.

Back then, you were offered your grad place in November/December but didn’t start until the following September. You could start early in January, but I didn’t want to. Instead, I applied to an internship programme called Mountbatten, which sends UK postgrads to work in the US. They had one placement in an agency — I got it — and six weeks after being offered the AMV job, I moved to New York.

Off the record, Stephen: the agency was awful. Truly awful. But it didn’t matter — it was New York, it was fun, and it was a huge learning curve.

I was supposed to return in September, but my visa allowed me to stay until March. I called AMV and asked if I could defer my start date by six months. To their credit, they said yes. For a tiny graduate who’d never set foot in the building to ask for a six‑month delay — and for them to agree — said everything about the culture. They wanted me to have the experience, enjoy it, and come back fulfilled.

What keeps you fired up?

I’ve always loved being close to the work — the creative process, how ideas evolve, how we sell, protect and grow the best thinking. I’m trying to make as much space for that as possible. And I’m realistic: the more senior you become, the further you drift from the coalface. Your impact shifts. You’re no longer in the day‑to‑day production trenches, but you can still make the right interventions at the right moments to help shape the work alongside the creative director. That’s still what gets you out of bed.

The other thing is people. Being surrounded by brilliant, excitable, curious, funny, entrepreneurial minds is a privilege. I was at the pub last night with a bunch of colleagues, looking around and realising how engaging and energising everyone is — and how lucky we are to work in an environment like that.

What would you say has been the biggest change the agency has experiences during your time there?

So much of the agency’s spirit has stayed intact over the year — the culture, the ethos.  Even Peter Mead still drops in once a week. The biggest shifts have really been about how the business operates as the world and the industry changes.

Having Peter still close by remains that living link to the founding values, a reminder of the “when in doubt, be nice” philosophy that shaped AMV. He even took me out to toast my promotion and reflected on his 70th year in advertising.

But the real changes have been in the shape and style of the work. That’s less about AMV specifically and more about the industry evolving — new expectations, new channels, new creative behaviours. Each leadership chapter over the last few years has brought its own focus.

The other major shift has been post‑pandemic life: figuring out how to balance remote and in‑person time, how to make the most of the moments when we are together, and how to preserve the serendipity — the corridor chats that often spark the best ideas outside of the meeting rooms. We’ve had to be more intentional about creating space for that.

So yes, plenty has changed — but mostly in response to the wider cultural and contextual forces shaping the industry. The core of the agency, the values, the humanity, the creative ambition — those remain reassuringly the same.

The marketer’s remit has become more complex over the last few years and agencies have had to evolve to keep up. What does the new client-agency relationship look like?

I think we all see how overwhelmed many marketing departments are — the sheer complexity of the job, the pace of change, and the increasingly intricate media landscape. The agency’s role, where we can, is to help shortcut that complexity: get to the heart of the question, strip away the distractions, and keep things simple. It’s about getting the right message to the right people at the right moment.

The other part is creativity as a problem‑solving tool. If you spoke to any creative here — or across the network — they’d say the same: we love solving problems with creativity, and that doesn’t always mean a classic campaign. Often our best work happens outside the campaign cycle, working alongside clients as an extension of their team to tackle the thornier issues that sit beyond what appears on a page or a media plan. That’s when we’re at our strongest.

What still takes you by surprise in the industry?

I think we all need to remind ourselves that, despite how much the industry is changing, some fundamentals remain constant. Our job is still to make work that’s either disproportionately entertaining or disproportionately helpful. Those are the two routes I always encourage clients to pursue.

There’s more content than ever, so it’s about earning an unfair share of people’s engagement — their attention, their time, their interest. We can easily drift toward complexity or whatever feels “new”, but the real question is whether it makes the work better, more engaging, more shareable, more likely to spark a reaction.

What surprises me is how often we come back to the basics — and how important it is to hold onto them.

What changes would you like to see in the industry?

For me, the most fundamental thing is ensuring this remains an exciting, engaging and accessible career for the next generation. That means making space for new talent in every department, and giving them the training and support they need — especially in a hybrid world where learning no longer happens simply by following people around five days a week.

It also means continuing to push for greater diversity across the agency landscape. It’s an ongoing agenda we need to lead on. AMV has made good progress over the years, but there’s always more we can collectively do.

Ultimately, what I want to see — in our agency and across the industry — is a future where this still feels like a fulfilling, energising career path. Because I genuinely believe it is.