Will Grundy on leading the next wave of strategy

It’s a growing rarity to find someone that hasn’t left their first job after more than a decade – even in adland. Will Grundy, having been at adam&eve\TBWA for nearly 15 years, is an exception to the rule. 

He was promoted to the agency’s CSO in January last year, having previously been head of strategy – originally joining through the adam&eve graduate scheme. 

“I love this place,” he begins. “I often feel I'm a fly on the wall in the All Black’s dressing room because I've had this incredible opportunity to learn from and work with generationally talented people across strategy, creative, account management – you name it.

“I never had a reason to look elsewhere. I love the people, I love the ambition of what it's trying to do, and we've been able to do it in amazing ways on incredible clients and bits of work.”

He is still energised by the promotion too. “It’s been a huge and incredibly exciting step up. You go from being head of strategy, where your role is to look after a department, and this is now about leading an agency. The distance between those two things is really significant.” 

Grundy notes that the legacies of previous adam&eve CSOs, with the likes of Martin Beverly, has left an “incredible challenge” behind – but one he is more than ready to step into and live up to expectations. 

His first mission has been to focus on embracing the agency’s recent waves of change post Omnicom takeover of IPG that saw the agency combine with TBWA and hone down on talent and capability: “For all the ways the world is changing, that's always going to be the single biggest determinant of success, I believe.

“We've very deliberately hired some of the best minds in the business from all around the world. We've hired incredible senior strategists like Martin Bassot, Britt Iverson, Lori Meakin – all of whom have an insane pedigree, who see the world differently, but who can also challenge everyone at adam&eve to create better, more interesting, more diverse-feeling work.”

New agency era

Just six months into the role it was announced that adam&eveDDB was to be no longer with the TBWA\London merger coining the new entity: adam&eve\TBWA. 

Grundy, however, is no stranger to a merger; in a strange full-circle moment, six months into joining adam&eve 15 years ago saw it merge with DDB. 

He says that the agency is "incredibly fortunate” to have benefitted from a huge injection of diverse talent from TBWA.

“I was doing a department meeting recently and found myself sitting and looking at the department and thinking, ‘My goodness, this is the most vibrant version of the adam&eve strategy department I think I've ever been a part of’. 

“There’s been a huge amount of change, a huge amount of stepping up and growing into a new remit and a new role, but I think the thing I've really tried to focus on is making sure that we have the best and most interesting people within the business, so that we can all grow together.”

And this change too manifests in the agency’s new home, having moved from it’s iconic Paddington base to the Old Bailey quarter. 

“There was such a latent nostalgia and love for Bishops Bridge Road, because before it was adam&eve\TBWA, it was obviously adam&eveDDB, and before that it was BMP. It had feeling first ideas in the walls. This is the place that birthed Smash Martians, as much as it birthed The Long Wait and Monty for John Lewis and Marmite, and all of these amazing things.”

Grundy notes that the move's announcement for long-standing employees like himself was “genuinely gutting” and initially left questions about the future of the agency, however, they swiftly discovered that the new space is exactly what it needed to propel forward.  

“It allowed us to have a space that is everyone's from day one culturally after the merger. It allows us to be one agency really quickly in a way that. 

“I remember when adam&eve and DDB merged – that kind of gelling and cohesion was almost impossible, because there were unwritten rules of how the building worked and where everyone sat. We've been able to completely forget all of them, so that's been a huge upside.”

And how does one, as a new CSO, find a flow of business momentum, off the back of a merger and complete office move across London? 

“I'm very fortunate in the sense that I didn't feel like I was inheriting anybody, partly because I had been running the strategy department for four years before our CSO,” Grundy says. “The same went for when we merged with TBWA. I was fortunate that by that point I'd had enough time in the role to have a sense of what we felt we were really missing, and how the skill sets and the disruption methodologies of TBWA could be a real complementary force to what we were already doing.”

Feeling first, effective work

The agency’s manta Feeling First is certainly at the epicentre of its work; “Putting Feeling First will always be the most effective way to build brands but it has to be so much more than that,” he explains. “It guides the way we think about client relationship building, it sets the bar for our own internal culture, it informs our approach to talent. 

“It's in everything that we do, and it's as much a lens for how we work and how we show up for each other and our clients as it is the things that we make and put out into the world.” 

Widening the agency’s strategy skill set is something he’s challenged since stepping up into the role, placing a “much greater emphasis” on upstream brand strategy and comms strategy as a core creative act.

Its recent work with Columbia Sportswear, which took the spotlight at Cannes, is a prime example of “incredibly brilliant brand strategy”, he says, which saw the agency completely reposition the brand in a way that “feels modern, brave and absolutely right” for what outdoor enthusiasts and fans love.  

‘Expedition Impossible’ for the brand sees a tongue-in-cheek invite to flat earthers to find the earth’s edge while wearing its gear. 

“It's a really modern creative idea that starts in social and is deliberately playful with specific communities, and then it ripples out into culture to a broader audience. That, for me, is the future of creativity in a lot of ways.”

And an increasingly integral part of its feeling first messaging is effectiveness; it’s an agency known for its award-winning effectiveness work, and is one always striving to make effective work. 

“Feeling First guides the way we think about effectiveness,” Grundy continues. “It's rooted in what we know works, not what we think or hope. It's about unlocking a brand's emotional potential and delivering it with intensity, consistency, and creativity. That will always be the thing we hold dear, no matter the client, category, or budget, because we know that's the most effective way to build brands.”

Its future of effective creativity, he believes, has to be about “how we elevate how people experience brands, not just how brands communicate”.

When asked about his favourite work done at the agency, Grundy is quick to name ‘Project 84’ for CALM, made in 2018.

The work, in its aim to highlight suicide prevention, saw 84 statues placed on top of the ITV Tower in London, and despite that being the only campaign asset, conversation grew across the public. 

“This was first time I ever got to experience the extraordinary talents of Ant [Nelson] and Mike [Sutherland], who are now our CCOs,” he explains. “I have a really deep personal and emotional connection to CALM, and I also think it was an extraordinary creative idea.

“It was an idea that nobody saw coming, and it genuinely transformed CALM as an organisation like never before. Most importantly, it saved hundreds if not thousands of lives, and it led to the creation of the UK's first ever minister for suicide prevention.”

He adds: “On a much more personal level, beyond the creativity of it all, knowing that up and down the country there are people whose lives are still being lived because of this idea that we made together, nothing can top how that feels. No amount of creative awards, pitch wins, promotions. Whenever I allow myself to think about it, that's the best thing I have ever done.”

Advertising from Will Grundy's lens

Creative Salon: Tell us about your career into advertising. Did you ever envision you'd be a strategist or work for a creative agency?

Will Grundy: On being a strategist, absolutely not. I just wanted to be as close to creative ideas as possible, and strategy was the closest I could get.

The first moment I knew I wanted to work in the creative industry was watching Marmite ‘Kiss’ as a kid in my parents’ living room. I remember thinking if somebody does that for a living, I would love to do that too

I had no idea then that I'd be fortunate enough to work in the industry, or at the agency that made that work, or even look after that brand later on.

At the time, DDB was the only agency that would have me. I applied for every graduate scheme under the sun, and they were the only people who said yes.

It worked out well. They gave me a job because they thought I might be a strategist, but I'd be a hopeless account manager.

I always knew I wanted to do this world, I just didn't know whether as a strategist or something else. I just wanted to get close to it. I'm incredibly fortunate I ended up here because I got to sit as a beginner in this generationally great creative agency and learn from incredible people.

And thank God everyone else said "no".

I knew from quite a young age I wanted to do this, although I don't fully know why beyond Marmite and a slightly unconventional English teacher.

We had a persuasive writing task when I was about 14. Instead of writing essays like 'ban fox hunting' or 'ban cigarettes', he asked us to come up with an ad.

Mine was no doubt terrible, but I remember loving it. I loved the lateral thinking, the creativity, and playing with language. I've always loved how you can create meaning in different ways.

What are you excited about for the industry?

That it's all to play for, is the simple answer. There is so much uncertainty in the world at the moment, and also in our industry.

I know first-hand, because we've all been through it in the last 18 months, how destabilising and untethering uncertainty can feel. But the positive side is that uncertainty is also kerosene for creative problem solving. At its best, this is an industry full of creative problem solvers.

So it's never been a more challenging time to be in the industry, but that's exactly what makes it exciting. The simple truth that no one has really defined it yet is exactly why it's all to play for.

Having the ability to think about these things, to imagine different ways of doing things, not to make it up as you go along, but to reimagine how things work and where Feeling First creativity can take us – that's the most exciting thing.

And what do you find to be the most frustrating thing about the industry at the moment?

Just how inward-looking it is. It's the dark side of advertising. It's fundamentally an industry about promotion, and it can become too interested in promoting itself.

The other thing I'm not frustrated by, but more concerned about, is the lack of desire to bring through the next wave of creative and strategic talent.

There's a view that junior roles can be engineered out of agencies to save costs. I've been here the whole time, so maybe that's why I feel it strongly, but I want agencies in 10 years' time to have a next wave of talent that can't be replaced by machines.

You can't have it both ways. You have to invest in junior talent and recognise its potential to transform the business. Continuing to suggest junior jobs can simply be replaced by machines will ultimately be our demise. Talent is always an investment. It takes years for the ROI to show, but when it does, it's transformational. We cannot forget that.

What is your main ambition as CSO?

It's very simple: to create more adam&eve CSOs.

I want to create CSOs who are better than I could ever be.

I believe the role of any leader is to create more leaders. If you do that, everything else takes care of itself.

How is the agency utilising AI, and why is it a tool that strategists get excited about? 

I hope we are using it with the right combination of curiosity, excitement, and skepticism.

I will never put AI before the value of human imagination, human curiosity, and human empathy – those will continue to be skills that this industry and what we do relies upon,

That being said, AI allows data to be more creative, more expansive, more integrated, and ultimately more effective in the work that we do – but it's only huge if we use it in the right ways.

The moment we outsource our critical thinking to the machines is the moment we look like turkeys waiting for Christmas.

Strategists are positively curious and interested in it; strategists at their core are interested in understanding things that they don't. As soon as we become obsessed with it, you miss the bigger picture. We're interested because we can see its potential, but we also want to understand its flaws, so that we can do better work.

And finally, if advertising never existed what would you see yourself doing?

I would be a food critic. What could be better than getting to eat all over the world day in, day out, for a living? I love eating, I love going for dinner, I love a long lunch, I love breakfast.

My problem is I don't think I'm discerning or harsh enough because everything's good, and if everything's good then maybe it's not the right thing for me.