Legends & Leaders To Host Agencies, Independents Or Consultancies Debate

Legends & Leaders, the industry mentoring and training group, will host a special event with a panel of some of the most experienced executives in the industry to discuss the future of agencies and independents in the management consultancy era.

“Agencies? Independents? Consultancies? What is the future of the comms industry?” will discuss and debate why clients are questioning the value of their agencies, while agencies struggle to maintain their margins and management consultancies encroach on traditional agencies’ domain.

A high level panel, moderated by former Australian Financial Review Media & Marketing Editor, Rochelle Burbury, includes:

• Rose Herceg – Chief Strategy Officer at WPPAUNZ – representing the holding companies and multinational agencies
• Lorraine Jokovic – CEO of LOUD Communications – representing the independent agencies
• Andrew Baxter – Senior Advisor at KPMG – Representing the consultancies
• Sharon Parker – Head of Business Development & Marketing at Gilbert + Tobin – representing clients.

“The communications industry has never been in more of a state of flux. Clients are questioning the value of the agencies they work with, so they’re looking around. Agencies are struggling to maintain their margins and retain the best people within the existing model,” Legends & Leaders Founder, Adrianne Nixon, said.

“Consultancies are offering services that were traditionally an agency’s domain and they’re staffing up with senior ex-agency leaders – the ones that some clients didn’t want to pay for when they were in agencies. Independents are finding the sweet spot and offering new models and agility but is their pricing sustainable and can they afford to provide the best people?

“Legends & Leaders is in the business of mentoring and sharing knowledge so we’re bringing together some of the best talent to discuss and debate the future of the industry.”

The special event will be held on October 2^nd at WeWork, 383 George St, Sydney and tickets are available here. 

Rose Herceg, Chief Strategy Officer, WPP AUNZ

Rose Herceg has built a career as one of Australia’s most respected social forecasters. Rose’s first business, Pophouse launched in 1998, became known as Australia’s best regarded company for innovation, social trends and business strategy. BRW Magazine named Rose the number one innovative thinker in the country and Pophouse the country’s best place to go for new business models and emerging trends data. In 2006, Rose sold her company to the STW Group.

In March 2015, Rose was appointed as the Chief Strategy Officer for the STW Group – now WPPAUNZ.  Rose has had audiences with some of the most distinguished leaders of the global community including Lord David Putnam – film maker and head of Tony Blair’s NESTA – The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, American publishing and media giant Oprah Winfrey, Bob Mansfield former Chairman of Telstra, Michael Lynch former Chief Executive of the Sydney Opera House, Google founder Larry Page and one of the world’s most distinguished architects, Frank Gehry.

Rose has written three books – her latest ‘The Power Book’ has been translated into several languages and is selling in Europe, Asia & the Middle East and is about to be launched in the US market.

 Lorraine Jokovic, CEO, LOUD Communications

Lorraine is a passionate advertising, marketing and strategy practitioner who honed her skills in account management working for both multi-national and Australian agencies.

Her extensive career in communications began client side working for McDonalds. She transitioned to agency roles with long-term tenures in international networks including Leo Burnett and Lintas.

Lorraine has worked with a broad range of clients but has particular specialty skills in the financial services, FMCG, Government and automotive categories.

As a specialist in communications integration Lorraine now leads LOUD, one of Australia’s most established independent strategic, creative agencies.

She’s focused on change, its speed and the impact it has on today’s brands. Her passion is working closely with dynamic companies who value the benefits that Change Marketing can bring to their business.

Andrew “Billy” Baxter, Senior Advisor, KPMG Australia

Thought leader, marketer and board director, Andrew is the Senior Advisor at KPMG’s entrepreneurial Customer, Brand & Marketing Advisory business, as well as a Senior Advisor at BGH Capital and the Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the University of Sydney. Prior to this he was the CEO of two of the country’s largest communications agencies, Publicis, and Ogilvy, where he was a trusted counsel to many of Australia’s most iconic brands.

Andrew is also currently the Chairman of three Boards – the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, Tjapukai, and Deakin Business School – and he is a Non-Executive Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Australian Pork. Furthermore, he has had previous Board roles at Catch Group, The Song Room (Chair), Melbourne Aces (Chairman), CC Media (a HT&E company) and the Communications Council.

Andrew regularly writes about the future of marketing, in a world where both consumers and technology are ever evolving. He has been named as one of LinkedIn’s Top 40 Australian influencers, recognised by Campaign magazine as one of the Top 5 Agency Leaders in Australia and New Zealand, and the winner of Australian Marketing Institute’s Sir Charles McGrath Award for his significant contribution to the field of marketing.

Andrew is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) from Monash University.

Sharon Parker, Head of Business Development & Marketing, Gilbert + Tobin

Sharon is a senior business leader with deep experience in FMCG including 18 years at Unilever working across a range of foods, home and personal care and deodorant categories.

Her career also includes an agency-side role where she focussed on developing a model for client/agency joint brief development. A pharmaceutical role leading media and digital at Glaxo Smith Kline also expanded her interest in marketing and business development in a highly regulated environment.

Sharon is passionate about putting the customer or the client at the centre of business strategy, marketing and innovation. With the many technology tools and software available to marketers these days she is a strong advocate of everyone in client or consumer facing roles believing that they can become ‘makers’ of content or communication. In some cases marketers need to ‘make’ in order to influence internal stakeholders. In others they may need to ‘make’ in order to explain their ideas for a brief or to a product developer. This is a fundamental change in marketer capability but one that empowers them to own their ideas and outsource less to external agencies.

In her current role as CMO Gilbert + Tobin, Sharon has brought new marketing and business development capability to the team and transitioned away from a traditional professional services marketing mindset. The focus is all about using data and insight to understand the core business issues of in-house counsel and designing the marketing execution to profile the G+T brand and the expertise of individual partners.

Rochelle Burbury, Principal, Third Avenue Consulting

Rochelle Burbury has more than 25 years’ experience as a journalist, editor, media trainer and corporate communications professional. As a business journalist of 20 years, Rochelle has written on media, marketing, advertising, consumer trends, retail and general business.

Rochelle began her career at B&T Magazine before moving to newspapers at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. She spent almost a decade at The Australian Financial Review as Media & Marketing Editor and also wrote for AFR BOSS and the AFR Magazine.

Rochelle is a former Board member of the International Advertising Association.

Third Avenue Consulting, a specialist, independent Public Relations firm that specialises in corporate and business-to-business PR and reputation management in the media and advertising sector, was established by Rochelle in 2013.