Howatson+Company, the delightfully precocious full-service agency founded by former Clemenger Group and CHEP head honcho Chris Howatson, has found its “forever home” on the corner of Sydney’s South Dowling Street, he told B&T in an exclusive chat.
The building, designed by William Smart’s Smart Design Studio, is hard to miss – but in the best way possible. It’s an old five-storey terraced house with a beautifully twisted and taut glass-and-metal structure attached, almost resembling a double helix from some angles.
It’s exactly the sort of place that you’d expect to find B&T‘s reigning Advertising Agency of the Year. And judging by the agency’s awards wall (more on that later), it’s clear the agency is appreciated beyond our pages and rightly so. But what you might not expect is the relatively unexciting reason Howatson+Company upped sticks and moved from its previous home on Commonwealth Street.
Find out more: Howatson+Company’s Agency Scorecard
“It started with simple economics,” Howatson tells us as we sit in the ‘Tangerine Room’ on the first floor of the agency.
“We were renting, originally, on a COVID deal. Rent was really good!” he said, laughing.
“But it was a short contract and after two years, it reset to normal Surry Hills rates. Then we needed another floor and when we looked at what that rent bill added up to, my wife said to me, ‘I wonder what you could borrow if you were paying that much in mortgage repayments’. We’ve essentially moved our rent into mortgage payments.
“I remember the ads growing up, ‘Rent money is dead money!” he added.
Now running his own independent agency, Howatson said that he was more aware of the incomings and (particularly) outgoings. Spending money on a mortgage is nearly always preferable to paying a landlord and being independent made it easier for the agency to move and fit out the new digs to its spec. And what a job they’ve done.
While most of Australia’s leading ad agencies have swish digs in Sydney or Melbourne, Howatson+Company’s site for 130 staff feels particularly special. Though much of that can be attributed to Howatson’s wife and the architects, Howatson himself had some important touches.
“My wife’s an interior designer so she managed the project with the architects. The external was done by William Smart of Smart Design Studio and on the inside, we wanted something that had a creative aesthetic to it but would also be a place that our clients could come to and feel like a grown-up place,” he explained.
“We really loved our first location on Commonwealth Street but it felt a bit like a creative startup. If you had a big enterprise client in there – and they were always lovely and enjoyed it – it felt small, it felt like it didn’t have the facilities and scale that would be reflective of a business like that. I remember when I was younger hearing why M&C Saatchi was based on Macquarie Street, Tom [Dery] and Tom [McFarlane] were quoted in the paper saying that your office needs to reflect the company you want to keep.”
The architects, Howatson explained, were given a brief along those lines and the rest is history. He described the building’s look as an “enduring aesthetic” with a balance between “corporate formality” and the “dynamism of an agency”.
During the week of SXSW Sydney, Howatson+Company hosted a coterie of adland insiders (with a dishevelled-looking B&T hack standing by the air con) for an informal drinks reception in the lowest level of the building. The more formal visitor experience, meanwhile, is pretty remarkable.
You enter through the old-timey terrace portion, down a narrow hallway and past the Tangerine Room, before being greeted at reception. To your left, there’s the plinth. It sits in the centre of the room – a deliberate choice – is spotlight from above – another deliberate choice – and it sits in front of the awards wall – another deliberate choice.
Howatson said it serves as a “representation of the client” and, whenever a client is coming to visit, they will see a little brand memento on the plinth. When we visit, it displays a small model of a Qantas aeroplane.
“The whole point is that the client is the focus and when we do good work for clients, the awards will come. Awards don’t come first,” said Howatson.
Once you’re finished feasting your eyes on Cannes Lions gongs and the very healthy collection of B&T Awards and Cairns Crocodiles trophies, you turn left into the newer section of the building. On the ground floor, you’ll find the business management teams – including Howatson, group MD Renee Hyde and business director Georgia Price.
Head up the stairs (or take the lift) and you’ll find the creative and design teams, with media and planning occupying the third floor and activation and planning on the fourth. There’s no rhyme or reason to the order other than the size of each team, explained Howatson, save for business management being ready to meet clients on the ground floor. On each level, there meeting rooms, some formal and some less so. And, unlike most Sydney offices, they’re named for the colours of the carpet: Fig, Cocoa and Blueberry – not the city’s beaches.
One common trait among all the rooms, however, is the incredible artwork on show. In the Tangerine room, there’s a painting by Chinese-Australian artist Zhong Chen and a photo from Bill Henson’s Untitled series. Upstairs in another meeting room, there are pieces from Paddy Lewis Tjapanangka, Vincent Namatjira and Destiny Deacon.
“We’ve tried to find stuff that inspires,” said Howatson.
“There’s much better art in here than in my home. Some people might ask why you’d do that but it’s important to have art in workplaces, particularly in a creative culture. We should be supporting and inspired by the arts.”
There are, however, two elephants in the beautiful room. First is the Melbourne office. Currently, the Victorian team is based in Windsor on Chapel Street. However, that team will also be moving to a similarly swish office with the “same philosophy”.
The second elephant, meanwhile, is that Howatson has been telling the industry that the agency will not grow beyond 200 people – what he calls the “intimacy inflection point”. With space for 130 in Sydney and 70 in the upcoming Melbourne office and around 160-170 people on the books at the moment, there isn’t much space to grow.
“We’ve built this building so that we can’t go over the 200. We can only fit 130 in here. We’ve created geographical limitations,” said Howatson.
“[These] are forever homes. We’re not interested in expanding to different cities. We don’t want to go over 200. It’s the intimacy inflection point, where you no longer know each other personally and humanly enough to cast people for the right job. When you can’t to the newest client, it means that the work becomes a process rather than instinctively human. The passion, the insights and the category comprehension all suffer.”
Maybe pop down to the nearby Cricketers Arms Hotel, you might spot a Howatson+Company staffer tucking into a post-work drink. Drop them your CV. Maybe you’ll be one of the lucky 200.
