In an industry that has been hit with waves of restructures, a revolving door of leadership changes and the relentless pressure to grow, ‘stability’ is not usually the first word associated with media agencies.
But that’s what Zenith Australia’s leadership team has provided in recent years, and it has quietly become one of the agency’s competitive advantages.
Led by Publicis Groupe veteran Jason Tonelli, who has been Zenith Australia’s CEO for the past three-and-a-half years, the agency’s three managing directors—Jonny Cordony (Sydney), Warwick Taylor (Brisbane) and Megan Kay (Melbourne)—have worked together for the past seven years.
Kay’s Melbourne office has grown by 60 per cent in the past few years, Cordone’s Sydney outfit has nearly doubled in size over the past decade, while Taylor’s Brisbane team has expanded from 15 people in 2018 to nearly 60 staff today, in a market that is harder to attract talent.
In recent years, Zenith has won major accounts including Adobe, Mars, Honda, Superloop, RAC Queensland and retained Disney and Aldi. The agency was a recent finalist in B&T’s Media Agency of the Year Award.
According to the trio, Zenith’s success across the three different markets is less about scale and more about alignment and trust.
“There have been seven years that we’ve all been in market leadership roles, and over that time, we’ve all been through the wringer,” Kay said. “There’s a level of trust that we’ve been able to build. For example, I’ve been there for both Johnny and Warwick when their fathers have passed, which still makes me emotional thinking about it.
“When you go through something like that with people, you know that they have got your back. I often joke that I call them my annoying little brothers.”
Cordone said that a shared understanding allows the trio to provide support in a manner that wouldn’t occur at agency teams that operate in a much more siloed manner.
“We’re not lost on the fact that we run individual markets in an Australian marketplace, so we’ve got this little hint of healthy competition which keeps us honest and keeps the banter up. It’s just fun.”
Taylor said that the trio benefits as much from their differences as their similarities.
“I’ll quite often kind of share a challenge or an opportunity with these guys, and they look at things differently than I do. So they’ll come at it from an angle that I haven’t considered,” he explained.
“It’s nice to have people that aren’t just going to echo back to you what you already think, who are going to be honest and transparent. We are pretty frank with each other, but we can also be vulnerable. We feel comfortable asking for help.”
Kay said the secret sauce is that the trio “leads very differently, but thinks collectively”
Taylor is described as the “calm sounding board” of the group, Kay is “fiercely protective, detailed and considered”, while Cordone is “very good with commercials”.
The balance between commercial performance and culture has become increasingly important as Zenith has scaled aggressively over the past few years.
“The growth part feels like the easy part,” Kay said. “It’s keeping the culture aligned as you’re doing that. You try not to crack the culture on your way through to growth.
“We’re not an agency that stands up there and promises, and then we go and hustle and try to deliver it and make it work. We’ve built the capability first, and that’s the game changer. There’s a different level of confidence that stability in the team brings.”
