Virginia Hyland has long been a trailblazer in the world of Australian media agencies.
After founding her own highly successful eponymous indie operation, she sold to Havas and now sits as the CEO of Havas Media Network Australia. B&T’s Greg ‘Sparrow’ Graham grabbed five minutes of Hyland’s very valuable time to ask her 10 very quick questions.
1. You’ve had a brilliant, diverse, long-term career mainly as a founder/indie media agency, if you had to pick only one what would be your career highlight so far?
Virginia Hyland: One career highlight was the realisation that I could compete against the big globals as an independent and give birth to my daughter at the same time! My largest client, COTY, called me when I was in the hospital the day after giving birth, apologetically explaining that global was running a pitch that would commence in two weeks.
With a newborn in one arm and laptop in another, the strategising began with files piled high in my hospital room. The timeline was tight for round one which with a noisy two-week-old in tow. Like a tidal wave coming over my head not knowing if I would drown working and breastfeeding around the clock. Happily, we surfed the wave and won the pitch up against the fiercest global powerhouses, WOW! I never knew I could handle this level of pressure delivering greater value than the competition.
2. What I love is you were a country kid of 17 years, and you came to the big smoke with no connections, how did you break into the ad world?
VH: I lived in a very small town, Gilgai, in Northern NSW, population 500. Doing work experience in high school I loved the energy, cut and thrust of the local newspaper hacks who were always on the hunt for the latest stories. Inspired by this experience I applied for a cadet journalist role at The Sydney Morning Herald. Unfortunately, they only had two cadets per year and I wasn’t one of them with no connections or endorsements to speak of.
The SMH also had a few vacancies in the rivers of gold Herald Classifieds. To go to the interview I had to figure out how to commute to Sydney, nine hours away from my hometown. I had never travelled on a train before.
Nervous with my shiny new interview clothes I arrived at the Fairfax Broadway building. They tested my typing ability (thanks Mum for teaching me). My 17-year-old self interviewed with the senior manager who couldn’t believe I had come to Sydney all by myself without my parents or support.
I think they took pity on me and gave me the job. It was the best day of my life, my first job in the big smoke. My job was to type up advertising listings in the Boating, Motor and Herald Trader section. Trained to upsell every call–bold print, buy an ad for two days and get the third day free and 14-point headlines to help your ad cut through. These were valuable skills that would carry me through future years and new jobs.
3. You give back to the industry in spades especially the MFA, why is that important?
VH: My passion is to help young bright-eyed smart talented people from all walks of life achieve their potential in our ever-changing industry. Proudly we set the tone by developing the new EVP “We are the Changers” after the talented Sophie Price developed the strategy.
I am lucky to work in an ever-changing industry and it is important to support emerging talent to create fresh thinking to continue to enable the media industry to thrive. Our industry contributes to the economic success of businesses. More than ever many in our industry are now working in marketing roles and as well as in agencies. This is an industry where you can join with relatively inexperienced and accelerate rapid opportunities if you grasp the ride with both hands, work hard, and maintain a positive attitude on the tough days.
This is an industry that will give back to you with a reach vibrant career working with every type of business, in any market around the world.
4. What are your client’s big issues at the moment and how is Havas helping them in challenging times?
VH: The big question from clients is “Are we doing enough to engage audiences in the most effective way?”
The conversation with clients is shifting and whilst we are activating campaigns with data, tech and AI in-channel they are now leaning in to ask us whether they have the right creative assets to really engage specific to channel.
Our focus is to help them iterate messaging and develop learnings so that they can be confident they are engaging audiences with the right message. That becomes the “X factor” when competing against similar companies that do not holistically measure the effectiveness of both the channel and the message within it.
5. You are an incredible industry mentor, who have been your mentors that have influenced your career?
VH: I witnessed the rise of Brendon Cook for many years with a team of 20 employees to become an empire. I’ll never forget his advice to me, he said, “Do you know the people running their own businesses that will be successful? The people who never give up…”
It was sage advice to dig deep through GFC crisis, Covid and manage teething pains when at times it would have been easier to walk away from building an agency.
Vince Meoli my CFO (and ex-CFO of Omnicom) was my big brother, every day he ran my financials as if it was his own agency. When Havas came knocking on my door he said “It never hurts to talk” and it turned into a fantastic union of two highly innovative media agencies enveloped by a Village of unique talent, with an entrepreneurial beating heart.
Recently I said to the Hotglue founder in Melbourne the same thing and they decided to join me, to continue to build integrated offerings for clients joining up social commerce, media and content production. It never hurts to talk!
6. As an industry what’s one thing you would change to make us all better?
VH: To be better we need to realise and truly appreciate the value we can add to designing and delivering meaningful growth for brands. If we all lean in and ask one extra question to our clients—what are the business objectives, do you get pushback internally when you are trying to innovate, over and above the brief where else can we help you…
Asking one extra question propels our industry into a new stratosphere of ideas as a business partner where we can continue to reinvent and reimagine the future offering of our industry.
7. You have been recognised for many industry awards including B&T’s Women in Media Awards and Power List. Are all awards created equal and do they matter to clients?
VH: Recognition is meaningful if we utilise our influence to create higher level conversations between our engaged marketers and our wonderful media, data and tech partners.
Holding discussions at senior levels to unlock creativity to better gain attention and influence consumer engagement of the highest value. Recognition opens more doors to ensure we support clients at the most senior influential levels.
8. Your clients hold you in the highest regard, how have you nurtured and built that trust?
VH: I will never forget that I’m successful because my clients personally support Havas. We dedicate our focus to serving their best interests.
For example, recently I found out that an advertisement we had placed with a media partner was going to run in the wrong area, due to a change in personnel at our media partner. At 7pm on a Friday night, I personally called the media partner and over Saturday we rectified the situation prior to launch so that all would run to plan. I thanked our media partner for their support and reassured the client that all was well. My loyal clients know that we will always act in their best interest no matter what.
9. What’s one thing that’s not on your LinkedIn profile?
VH: I’m so proud of how amazing my talented teenage daughters have grown up under the watchful eye of my husband who is a trailblazer in his own right.
He became a guiding light to inspire other dads to spend more time with their family by choosing the all-important path of looking after our daughters, whilst I was running the agency. My eldest daughter has just completed the HSC overcoming her own development challenges to be offered eight Junior College basketball full scholarships in the USA. My husband dedicated early morning rises constantly for many years to enable my daughter to do extra training before school—amazing commitment from both daughter and dad.
10. Important last question, do your parents know what you do?
VH: Haha! Not really… the closest analogy I’ve been able to explain is likening media to stock exchange trading. We analyse where to invest advertising dollars in other companies to deliver the best returns. I will say they are still proud of seeing their country kid bust through the ceiling in the big smoke (whatever it is she does exactly…).
