In adland, we love to wring our hands and ask what marketers need to do so that all CEOs and CFOs will take them seriously. Sometimes we even dare to ask why.
Making the leap from the ‘fun’ side of the business to the serious side, however, is often too much. However, Anouk Darling is one such marketer who has taken the road less travelled. In an exclusive chat, B&T sat down with the now-CEO of purpose-built student accommodation company to find out how she has made a squiggly career a success and what the rest of adland can learn.
“The kick start to my career was being brand manager for LVMH when I was 24 and moved from Melbourne to Sydney,” Darling told B&T.
“Ironically, they shipped up my motorbike but then told me I couldn’t ride it to work because it wasn’t cool. If I think about it now, they’d probably be paying me to ride the bike!”
It was, of course, the 90s. Women on motorbikes were not quite de rigueur in the days of heroin chic. It was a black-and-chrome Yamaha Virago 250, if you were wondering.
“I guess I’ve always been a bit of a disruptor, an innovator and ahead of my time,” Darling added.
From the heady world of high fashion with LVMH, Darling’s next port of call was the marketing director of Oroton. Darling described her time at the Aussie fashion “massive transformation piece” and worked on everything from product design to pricing and came at things “differently” with how the brand was marketed. With an MBA completed, she stopped off at Condé Nast before moving into consulting.
“With my strength in retail, strategic marketing and branding, I picked up a lot of retail clients. One of them happened to be Westfield,” said Darling.
Over time, the Westfield account became “too big” for her to manage with a small consultancy. Darling contacted Moon Agency for help and, in 2003, joined the agency as head of strategy and planning. During her time there, the agency (and Darling) played a central role in creating Jetstar. Then, in 2006 STW acquired the agency, moving it towards a more creative offering. Darling then became the CEO. In 2015, the agency was rolled into the Ikon Group by STW. STW itself was then acquired by WPP in 2016.
Diving into the B&T archives, on 19 September 2013, we lauded “another stellar Gruen show” for the ABC, with 988,000 viewers tuning in to see Darling, Wil Anderson, Todd Sampson, Russel Howcroft and Dee Madigan “discuss the latest goings-on in advertising” — the more things change.
A month prior, Darling had told B&T in the run-up to the 2013 Federal Election that with “consumer sentiment… down” businesses needed to “shake off the inertia, lose the fear and play big where others are playing it safe”.
“With headlines like ‘unemployment will lead to a new deficit, the NBN debate around fibre to the home or the node and the coalition’s promise to abolish carbon tax’, it’s time to focus on what really matters for our clients; creating more value for their brands, their staff and their customers,” she added.
“While projects like the NBN are a future-proof play and need to happen, we don’t have the luxury to stop and wait.
“Australian businesses have a choice to shift gears with the vigour around the election. It’s time to shake off inertia, lose the fear and play big where others are playing it safe. It’s business that will get us out of the quagmire – not government – and that’s what we’re focusing on inspiring with our clients.”
The more things change. The Coalition would win a landslide election victory, with Tony Abbott becoming PM.
From Bikes To Boards
By the time STW sunset Moon in May 2015, however, Darling had already been sitting on the board of Macquarie Group for three years and sitting on the board of Hong Kong e-commerce startup Idecorate, investing fund DNA-LAB and Great Southern Railway.
“I was on [the Macquarie] board for nearly 10 years. I’ve only recently come off,” said Darling.
In 2014, she joined the board of Discovery Holiday Parks and during its sale to Sunsuper, she came into contact with private equity firm Allegro Funds. Impressed with her “different” way of “thinking,” “speaking,” “dressing” and focus on brand, creativity and predictive analytics.
In July 2020, she left Allegro Funds, but not before swinging back by agency land for a stint on the board of Enero in 2017. Per the B&T archives again Darling replaced her one-time Gruen co-star Howcroft as chair.
“She has a great strategic mind, has run a very successful agency and has worked globally with some of the world’s most recognised brands,” said then-Enero CEO Matthew Melhuish.
Upon leaving Allegro, she joined Scape – initially on a six-month project basis to help the student housing provider with an acquisition of its largest competitor involving a rebranding, positioning and more.
“I started on February 6 2020. And as you know, the whole world changed,” she said.
“There I was doing a project. I could have gone back to private equity but I’m one of those people that needs to see things through. I don’t know if I had Stockholm Syndrome or what was going on, but I was like ‘This is horrific, the industry is on its knees, the PM told students to go home.'”
However, the wheels were already in motion. The acquisition needed to be completed at the hardest time to be in student housing.
Intersections
During her career, Darling attributes her rising through the ranks to a variety of things – chief among them, hard work. But her most striking assessment of leadership is in impostor syndrome, a term that many in advertising will likely encounter on a daily basis.
“When I was with private equity, that was the most comfortable I’ve been. They knew that I beat to a different drum. They’ve already got the most brilliant financial analysts and capability. I had something that they didn’t have. That was probably the first time I felt that I didn’t have impostor syndrome. When I’d been a CEO, I’d been like ‘Oh my God, how am I doing this? Am I really the right person to be doing this?’ Even as the head of an agency,” she said.
“I think my way round it was realising that everyone has something to bring. There were a couple of things that I really believed in, one was the Medici Effect… When they were solving things, they would bring disparate thinking to the table. If they were building an aqueduct, they’d bring a philosopher, a theologian, an engineer, an artist and the head of the church and they’d debate the problem.”
While nowadays the theologian might have their invite lost in the post, the fact remains that the best ideas happen at the intersection of disciplines.
“I try to bring that diversity of thought and cross-sectional thinking everywhere. Even now, I’m in an industry that is really property, it’s real estate, but I didn’t grow up in those sectors, so I could say ‘What right do I have to be here?'” she said.
“Most CEOs, whether male or female, typically come through legal or finance, not strategic marketing, branding or creativity” added Darling. “While I have an MBA and I’m commercially strong, it’s the accidental career!”
“People get stuck in the paradigm in which they live and know. But the minute they’re challenged or something is brought to them that is different, people become so set in their ways that they find it confronting or they love the fact that you’re challenging and disruptive… I just wish throughout my career that I had someone telling me ‘Focus on your superpower and whatever that is, amplify it and go for it’ because it tends to be the things that people are most passionate about, they are therefore going to be the best at.”
Perhaps then, the journey from marketing and agency land to CEO is not about upskilling yourself to the point of accountancy. It’s about leaning on the skills unique to our industry and letting others fill in the gaps.
