Back in 2002 when Andrew Little took on the group managing director role at DDB Melbourne the agency was in danger of closing, making the move a potential career-breaker for the then 32-year-old. However, under his leadership the agency has moved back into the black and improved so much that it won B&T’s Victorian Agency of the Year in 2006, leaving Little determined to win it again this year.
Little is considered one of DDB’S rising stars in this region, says his boss Martin O’Halloran, who is chairman/chief executive of DDB Australia and New Zealand.
“At some point in time we will be looking at other opportunities for him, but right now he’s doing a terrific job in Melbourne and is definitely one of our stars,” says O’Halloran.
“He built that office up from being on its knees and losing money and now it’s quadrupled in size and performing really well. It was a lot of rolling his sleeves up and doing the hard work and consolidating the clients he had and slowly growing relationships like ANZ over a five-year period.”
Originally from Brisbane, Little hails from a direct marketing background, starting in the industry at Salmat where he worked for three years before joining Mojo Brisbane as an account manager (direct) in 1995. He stayed with Mojo for the next five years relocating first to Sydney then Melbourne before joining DM outfit Rapp Collins in 2000.
Little was appointed as managing director by former chief Jhonnie Blampied on the back of his success with Rapp Collins, which under Little’s leadership had gone from 10 employees to 38 and added new business including Australia Post, Kmart, TXU and AAMI.
While he was one of the youngest group MDs within DDB, he says at the time the agency was only Rapp Collins and a small group of people at DDB. The group has since grown to 110 people.
Little says: “When I came to Rapp from DDB I was a wide-eyed 32-year-old and I’ve learnt a lot since then, I can tell you. When you don’t have all the experience the one thing in your favour is you are not scared to take a punt because you don’t know the consequences. We made some appointments when the revenue wasn’t really there in the belief that with great talent will come business and that’s how it panned out.”
Working across clients including ANZ, Sensis, TruEnergy, AAMI, Heinz, Cussons, Australian Unity, BabyLove and Amcal, 98% of the business has been won locally which is unusual for a multinational.
The business model that Little backed five years ago was to strive to become the best integrated agency in Melbourne, which meant having one account team working across all clients, and a completely integrated creative department, a strategy that has helped it become one of Melbourne’s biggest agencies. Little thinks his background as a direct marketer helped him embrace the integrated model.
“You can say you are integrated but really integration isn’t about having lots of different agencies working together, it’s about a culture. If the creative director of your advertising agency doesn’t like the creative director of your digital agency then it’s never going to work and what we were able to do very quickly was to break down all those cultural barriers,” he says.
Starting with a strong DM agency and a weak advertising agency also meant the advertising agency didn’t have a monopoly on the ideas making the generation of campaign ideas more fluid across the group.
Nick Condon, managing director of DDB, and Little’s second in command, says, as well as being one of his best mates, Little has been an inspiration.
“It was a big leap for me to join DDB four-and-a-half years ago because at the time it wasn’t really on the radar and when I told a few people I was making a move to the agency they were like ‘what are you doing, that place is about to close’ – and it was only because I knew Andrew’s reputation that I came and he really has been an outstanding guy to work for,” says Condon.
He thinks part of the turnaround is the culture Little has installed at the agency.
“Andrew’s just an incredibly down-to-earth character and that really permeates the whole business. There are no egos in this place and I think that has had a big impact on the type of people that DDB Melbourne people are, they are just down-to-earth really lovely people and that really comes from the top,” he says.
O’Halloran says Little can get quite interesting late at night – “he’s a Queenslander and therefore loves his Bundy”.
“Andrew’s a real character and that’s what I like about him, he’s unflappable and building really strong client relationships is the way he operates … he’s had to grow into the job so he’s had many challenges trying to work out how to solve them, but has always comes up trumps,” says O’Halloran.
Condon adds that Little manages to balance his work and personal life and is a great father to his two young children, getting out the door at 6pm most nights so he can spend time with his kids.
Asked for funny stories, Condon hesitated before remembering last year’s staff Christmas party. “He was the last person to leave at about 5am and he was dressed as a clown with a full face of make-up, a wig, two-foot long shoes and he was tying to hail a taxi on a city road in south Melbourne,” he says
“It took him two hours to get a cab.”
But there’s little room for clowning around in the near future with Little saying there’s unfinished business at DDB Group in Melbourne – he wants to be the best agency in town and there’s work still to be done, starting with improving the agency’s creative reputation.
He says: “Next step for me could be anywhere in the DDB network really, but it’s not something I’m thinking about at the moment.”
