Peter Reid On Why MSQ Is Betting On AI, Agility, And The Challenger Opportunity

Predictably AI once again dominated the conversations at Cannes Lions. But for Peter Reid, global chief executive of MSQ, the more interesting question is not whether agencies are using the technology, but whether they are using it to build better, more creative, and more commercially resilient businesses.

Speaking during the Festival of Creativity, Reid set out why he believes MSQ’s mid-sized scale gives it an advantage at a time when marketers are demanding more agility, more integration, and more business impact from their agency partners.

He also discussed why brands should stop chasing vague notions of “moving at the speed of culture”, why AI should enhance rather than replace human creativity, and why the agency business model can no longer rely on the same structures that have defined it for the past 15 or 20 years.

From MSQ’s growing US ambitions to the importance of senior talent, employee ownership and challenger-group momentum, Reid is optimistic about the industry’s future — even if he believes it may look unrecognisable within five years.

Creative Salon: Have you heard anything good? Has there been anything interesting? What has been your highlight so far, or main takeaway? You can say nothing.

Peter Reid: I was going to do a bit of a good, bad and ugly take on Cannes.

The fun bits, for me, are when people steal the show — the celebrity moments over the years. The three I was going to call out, with a slightly playful but still serious take, start with MediaLink. I’ve always loved how they took over Cannes without paying for the Palais. And when Michael Kassan left, he held a party half an hour before the MediaLink party upstairs. I love that.

Today, for those in the Palais, the Grindr bus parked right in the middle was my highlight. For a brand to get such a return from a bold, impactful move — that was my top one.

From a celebrity point of view, it’s been quieter than previous years. Jay normally hangs out with Ryan Reynolds most of the week, but he’s been watching the World Cup, so it’s been lower key.

I loved seeing Bryson DeChambeau eating ice cream after his chat. And Oprah summed things up with her line: “my brand is my heart”. Only Oprah could deliver that with such weight.

And then the ugly: I’m sure those of you who’ve been to a lot of content events this week — excluding the MSQ‑led ones — have heard the phrase “brands need to move at the speed of culture” about 20 times. No one’s been able to tell me what that speed actually is, or how to do it. That would be more helpful.

Is that really possible for agencies?

I think they need to try and embed themselves in culture. But I think it’s much more about finding the right piece of culture for the brand and making that work, and not worrying too much about whether you’re moving at the right speed. It’s about finding the right partnership and something that you can be authentic with.

You started at McKinsey. Why did you move into adland?

Last night was the first time in 19 years I could make a quip about McKinsey — we had the CMO and deputy CMO there. She said she’d graduated from EY to McKinsey, and I was able to say I’d graduated from McKinsey to MSQ.

And that is true. When we originally set out as a public company, I joined to do a proper job after too long advising and leading reports and decks. What I found was a brilliant group of agencies inside a broader organisation that needed some civility, but had a huge opportunity to create something different. That’s what we began in 2011, and it’s the journey we’ve been on ever since.

And to think back on that journey, there’s been a lot of change with the networks and there’s a lot going on in the world right now. What opportunity does that give companies like yourself?

I think there are probably two things that come together.

Unfortunately, what you need is to be genuinely AI-enabled, with creativity that delivers for clients. And you need to be agile and you need to integrate different services.

My experience, being told this, is that the first one — they’ve been trying for years to bring together media and creative, and they just can’t do it. Organisations are too big, they’re not agile, the incentives are wrong, and just changing a brand name at the top of the business is not going to actually bring people together. So that’s the opportunity for us, I think.

But also the bit that’s perhaps more surprising is that they’ve made lots of announcements about £100m spend on this AI partnership, but what we see on the ground — and lots of people here can testify to that — is actually they’re not producing something that’s working for a client on the ground today, which is what clients are looking for.

That’s what we’ve focused on. We’ve spent a little bit of money, we’ve spent a lot of time on it, and we’re very lucky to have people like Fergus [Dyer-Smith] and Darryl [Newton], who’ve helped us on this journey. But we’re actually able to transform our business in a way where we are doing better work for clients with AI.

We’re also trying to get into new revenue streams, and we’re being more efficient. But that’s the third piece, and it’s all with creativity at the heart.

That’s what we’re trying to do. And I think you’re much better placed in the mid-size group to be able to blend together that agility, which you need to bring teams together, but also to bring actual real standout strategy and creativity with the AI background.

What are you hearing from marketers as all this is going on? Because they have a hard enough time as it is, meanwhile so many of the agencies are struggling on certain things as well. Is that helpful for you?

II think it is helpful. People want experienced partners who can work on their business — people who are flexible, agile, and able to address problems with a genuinely business‑led approach.

As an industry — and we’re not exempt — we’ve too often focused on marketing objectives. What we’re increasingly trying to do is start from the core business objective. I don’t think agencies have always been good at starting from that point of view — that’s what we’re trying to do, and it has to be good for the industry as well as for us.

Of course, we need to talk about AI, because we have to. What impact is that having on the business? How established and integrated is your thinking across MSQ, and where are you hoping to take it next?

Yeah, that’s a big question.

The big change for us is moving from experimentation to having a clear vision for how we want to use AI across the business. There’s still a long way to go — there’ll still be a long way to go in 12 months — but we’re probably halfway, maybe two‑thirds, through a transformation that’s radically reshaping the company.

From a delivery point of view, like most agencies, we used to approach every project differently. We’ve worked hard to standardise processes without stifling creativity, and to deliver more like a tech company. We think far more about product than we did 12 or 18 months ago, and we deliver more like a tech company than we did then. But we’re still only halfway, two‑thirds of the way through getting everyone working that way.

You have to figure out what this means for each role — account managers, creative directors, strategists — and those needs differ, even if some elements overlap.

After 20 years in the industry, I believe you need a bit of luck. Leveraging some of the projects that came from the Wooshii acquisition has helped move us forward.

We’ve also had the right mentality, and people are embracing it. As I’ve said from the start, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, so you might as well embrace it.

That’s what we’ve tried to do across the agency. We’ve spent a lot of time on hearts and minds, on driving change, on training. We’ve come an incredible distance in the last 12 months — and we’ve still got a long way to go over the next 12.

What impact do you think you’re seeing on commercial creativity right now?

I’d probably put the two in different buckets. I really enjoyed the panel in Cannes with Lucas, Fergus Moore on the product side, and Joe Lyle, who leads our product and tech.

It showed how strong creative thinking combines with delivery — getting to answers faster and better. That’s the real difference for us. We genuinely think it improves creativity. We did a brilliant piece of work for Mars with Respawn about 18 months ago, creating an entire brand world with AI. Developing three worlds at that depth would have taken weeks with multiple animators; instead, we produced richer, deeper work in far less time. Ultimately, the output was 50 times better than it would have been without AI. That’s how we think about creativity.

I also believe — and people have said this all week — that if we lose creativity and emotional connection between consumers and brands, we’ll end up with bots chasing each other around the internet. If that happens, we might as well all go home; there’ll be no Cannes in 20 years. That’s my view on the creativity side.

Commercially, I’ve been heartened by conversations this week. We have to change business models. It makes no sense to operate in an AI‑enabled world the way agencies have for the last 15 or 20 years. A lot of holding‑company leaders have stood up and said that, and they’re right. I’ve been an optimist from the start — this is a catalyst to build more sustainable models that fit the age we’re entering. But we need to keep pushing.

What does that mean then, in terms of the human skills that are becoming even more important?

I think most of what we do is broadly fine. I genuinely believe the strategic‑and‑creative piece is where we add real value — and where AI won’t match us any time soon.

It’s often the counterintuitive insight that leads to an amazing campaign. For the next few years, AI won’t deliver that; it will summarise and analyse what already exists. The Cadbury Gorilla campaign is a good example — that’s never going to come from AI, in my view. That’s the opportunity.

It’s that moment where strategy and creativity meet that really makes the difference, and I still see huge potential there.

We’re doubling down on investment — in senior talent and in junior and entry‑level talent — because that’s what best positions us for the world we’re moving into.

That’s interesting, because who’s hiring right now? What’s the opportunity then in terms of the talent that’s out there?

From the holding company point of view, the challenge of merging all of media into one thing, and things like that, is it doesn’t create the reasons why people came into the industry in the first place, which generally is working with clients and actually doing the work.

We’ve tried to always do that. I think what we found is, I’d say we probably had it in the UK for a while, but I think globally now there’s so much amazing talent in the US, the same in Asia, and most of them want to work somewhere where it’s a bit more flexible, it’s a bit more agile, and you’re actually getting back to the reasons why they’re in business in the first place.

Can you talk to me about how you see the culture of MSQ and what you’ve done to build that?

I think culture has always been critical. I’ve always found it hard to talk about in new business because everyone claims they’re collaborative and flexible. What we’ve tried to do is bring clients into the office so they can actually experience it. That’s why having everyone under one roof — recently in New York, and in London for a while — where you can’t see where one capability starts and another stops, is important.

We work hard to nurture the cultures within individual capabilities, but I’ve always felt there’s a real commonality across them.

What sets us apart is that we are collaborative — across the UK and the US. If there’s a problem or an opportunity, people get on the phone and lean in. They don’t think about where the revenue comes from; they think about solving the client’s problem. Some of that comes from our employee‑shareholder model, where the top 200 people have always been shareholders. I think that’s helped build that collaborative mindset.

And, ultimately, we’re nice, honest people. I think that matters too.

Can you put the Peter Reid stamp on MSQ? What would you say people say that is?

That is the hardest question. I think, from what I brought to the business, it’s the fact that I haven’t been in the industry now for 20 years, but I didn’t start in the industry. So oftentimes, I think I’m quite good at working out how to motivate people and understand what interests people, and tailoring things, and thinking about people as individuals and agencies as where they are in their cycle rather than otherwise. In a sense, probably from an AI point of view, I’ve helped to create the vision for the business and get the right people in the right place. It’s probably much more that. I actually don’t think, and you can probably ask everybody, there’s a massive stamp that I’m necessarily beyond the culture.

The big thing for us is we’re now — I knew this when we were in New York a couple of weeks ago — we’re now about double the size we were in the US, certainly 18 months ago. That’s great from a US point of view. But I think a $50m account tends to be transatlantic at least, if not international. We’re now at the point where we basically have all of our capabilities in the US, mainly under one roof, in the same way we do in the UK. I think we have a particularly credible proposition, which probably two years ago we had in the UK, but we didn’t quite have in the same way. We managed to punch above our weight in the US, but it feels more of a reality than in the past. So that’s probably the main thing.

Give yourself a timescale for reaching that, or is it just currently an ambition?

I’ve told Aaron [Lang, MSQ president] 18 months.

What encourages you?

The thing I believe in the US, and globally, is that there are very few really credible alternatives to the holding companies, which I think brands are really looking for.

We need to continue to build our scale to really take advantage of that as well. But that feels to me like more of an opportunity than it’s ever been, and that enhances what we’re trying to do.

It comes back to what we were saying earlier. I really believe agencies now have a more important role than ever, because breakthrough work — whether in CX and user experience or in more traditional, composite campaigns — is going to matter even more in an AI‑enabled world.

Clients have in‑housed certain things over the years, mostly production, but the breakthrough idea hasn’t been in‑housed. That’s only becoming more valuable, and agencies will drive it.

The other encouraging thing is the opportunity to build a more sustainable business model — which links back to your McKinsey question. I’m still shocked by how agencies price things. We might deliver a brilliant segmentation and charge £100,000, while McKinsey charges much more. As an industry, we haven’t started from a great place.

But if we get to a model where we say, “Here’s what we’ll deliver,” and then, “If we achieve these outcomes, we share fairly in that value,” without obsessing over every detail, it aligns the brand’s objectives with the agency’s. It’s been hard — everyone talks about it, but fee discussions kill the appetite. Still, I think we will change, and we have to.

So, particularly over the last two years, I’ve been more optimistic about the industry than ever... It’s a very exciting moment.

Final question, because let’s get through it. In the short term, let’s just say for this year, what are you looking forward to? Do not say England winning the World Cup, because that’s not going to happen.

Scotland winning the World Cup.

That’s also not going to happen.

Well, I don’t know if I’m making your final, final question, but actually there are probably a couple of things.

I do think being able to bring together a lot of hard work for what we’ve done, particularly in the US, and seeing that really become a reality, but also on an international basis, is probably the biggest thing.

Even things like getting everyone under one roof in an office took a long time and a lot of hard work. But I think we’re really seeing the benefit of that, and I think we’ll see the benefit in terms of results off the back of it.

Also, international stuff. But we’ve also always tried to keep that entrepreneurial flavour to the business. I think the sport and entertainment business we launched two years ago is probably still the fastest-growing part of the group, and I would love to do a few more things like that.

One of the things we want to do is in Europe turn a CX and DX business into a fully-fledged MSQ. And finally, after 15 years, you added a bit of value today, suggesting maybe we double down in B2B influencer and creative, which I thought was a pretty good idea.