Rehab: An Advertising Love Story

It was certainly a rude awakening for Hildie Neuman, the 50-year-old global business director on JWT's Kimberly-Clark business. Superficially at least, there's nothing "JWT" about Neuman: With a hairdo that's somewhere between a news anchor's and a flight attendant's, and a taste for cherry-red sweater pants and white pantyhose, she's "J. Walter Thompson" all the way. She talks about her brands, such as Kleenex, as if they're her babies. When asked to describe how people felt when Ryan and Montague came on board, she demurs, "Remember, I work in my own little world."

Not for long. Early in her tenure, Ryan told Neuman that she wanted to start seeing her work before it was presented to clients. "She was like, 'Why, don't you trust me?' " Ryan remembers, "and I said, 'Yeah, don't you trust me?' " Neuman told Ryan not to get involved in her business; Ryan, whose presence is much larger than her petite frame, responded that she was going to start inviting herself to Neuman's meetings. Eventually, Ryan says, Neuman got pretty exasperated: "She was like, 'Rose and Ty--who are these people?' "

For Montague and Ryan, Neuman was a vexing symbol. "There's a group of people whose arms are folded, and they're leaning back and waiting to see," Montague says. "Either you lean forward or you get out," adds Ryan, admitting that for JWT, inertia is still the biggest threat.

Ryan found that her 'rising stars' were not only unclear about JWT's creative voice and vision but most 'had never met each other before.' "

Encouraging her staff to lean forward had been Ryan's first order of business in the months before Montague's arrival. To propagate her message, she identified younger folks in second-in-command positions who she thought would be eager for change. What she found was that these "rising stars" were not only unclear about JWT's creative voice and vision but most of them "had never met each other before." She was horrified. After a 19-year career at agencies where open space, flat structures, shouting matches, and collaboration were the only acceptable ways of working, she realized she had a much deeper problem. The Hildie Neumans of the organization were more connected with their clients' cultures than with JWT's. In fact, there was no JWT culture.

When Montague arrived nine months later, he and Ryan set about drawing staffers out of their caves. They promptly kicked off a multimillion-dollar work-space renovation, stripping everyone but Jeffrey and the payroll department of their private offices. Today, half the space has been refitted, a neo-dotcom playground replete with pop-arty Scandinavian furniture and tents plastered with lines from Catcher in the Rye.

More important, though, Ryan and Montague began infusing the place with some new blood. About 35% of the staff has since left or been let go; Montague cleaned out the creative department, too--to the tune of about 50%--and brought in eclectic talent from smaller shops to "help create new muscle memory" for copywriters and art directors. He also began overhauling the creative standards themselves: In an agency that had survived for years on standard broadcast and print ads, he demanded that his teams come up with much bigger ideas, ones that could replicate and mutate across traditional and nontraditional media. Every employee--whether on the creative or business side--was given a portfolio to defend at the end of the year, meaning everyone would now be held to account for the success or failure of the product. Montague instituted a new, brutally candid 1-to-10 rating scale for creative work: A 10 was "World Beating: It is an entirely new idea that is… being talked about worldwide"; a 1 meant the work was "Damaging… worse than a waste of time…. You'd be better off staying at home." He told the New York office that none of its work rated higher than a 5.

Ryan and Montague also needed to build a system for working together. They knew the potential for miscommunication and even outright combat between them could become their most serious internal threat. So they spent two days in a room putting their philosophies, strengths, weaknesses, and fears on the table. They set up a daily half-hour meeting, regardless of whether they were in the office ("It's sacred," says Ryan). They also did their own version of war gaming and discovered that, despite their opposing styles of decision making--Montague is a ponderer, Ryan is anything but--they landed on the same solution every time.