What I learned as CEO of the world’s most famous ad agency

When you become the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, it’s clear you are a custodian of this storied brand for a finite period, as nobody has yet or potentially will outlive its legacy. 

And strangely, as a CEO, this knowledge was incredibly liberating. It was clear my No. 1 job was to help reboot the company and to give it a clear vision which would breathe new life in the today but, more importantly, to create a platform for those who come tomorrow. 

So, as I start a new journey beyond Saatchi as the founder of andOpen.xyz, a coaching and content collective to supercharge modern leaders, I wanted to share seven learnings as potential inspiration. 

S – Story 

When I landed at Saatchi, the company was a 50-something-year-old startup with a celebrated past that needed to be respected but not revered, to create a new chapter in its story. Becoming CEO at the mid-century mark felt like it was halftime in the company’s history, and the job was to craft a new story for the next 50 years. 

We needed to create a fresh but simple company vision that felt both natural for the brand, but also gave a clear story for talent to join, stay, and thrive at Saatchi, in a new era of work. We needed something that gave our team and clients a reason to believe in this storied brand again, which is how we arrived at a mission to be the most influential creative company from modern Britain.

Historically, at its best, that’s who Saatchi & Saatchi was. And as the world evolves, it felt right that this brand play a role again in helping creatively navigate what our industry, and what our company and clients, could be and do, from the nation we were born in. 

Saatchi works with some of the most influential brands in the U.K. and the world, from British Telecom to Brewdog, Subway to Siemens, Deutsche Telekom to Visa. So, building a narrative did feel natural and, more importantly, achievable. Therefore, the only real job was to give this story to our people, our partners, and collaborators and let them make it theirs. 

A – Alchemy 

The reason there is a picture of myself and some way smarter humans with this article is that, as a leader today, you cannot deliver your story without your crew. I was lucky because, over time, I got mine. 

This is even more important within the advertising industry, as the one (only) thing you really sell is the team that creates your ideas. Employees buy team and chemistry, clients buy team and chemistry, the market invests in your team and chemistry—so, spending time defining your teams and unleashing the alchemy is key. 

It’s imperative for any CEO leading a modern company to get the conditions right for the team and the company to be one; if you get the alchemy bubbling, then your story will flow. 

A – Ambition 

A company with a storied past needs to look to the future with a bigger ambition than where it’s been before. This is not about being better than what came before, it’s just being clear how yesterday’s foundation fuels the promise of tomorrow with a rearticulated vision as the center point for everything you do. 

In the last year, Saatchi was one of Fast Company’s 10 Most Innovative Companies in Europe, it launched the U.K.’s first open source national curriculum for schools, created the world’s first value-driven NFT for Deutsche Telekom, challenged the U.S. Supreme Court on abortion rights, had more females in the C-suite than men for the first time in its history, and even won Campaign’s Turkey of the Week for an ad that didn’t hit the mark, to mention a few. 

Alongside what seems like rose-tinted chutzpah, there are clearly ups and downs, Turkey of the Week being among them. None of this would have been possible, or easy to positively react to, without a grand ambition to be the most influential creative company from the U.K. to run toward. 

So, build your story and set a strong ambition. Then every daily decision, positive or negative, can be more easily acted upon within the vision you are driving toward. 

T – Try 

When you lead a culture with a long history, you sometimes need to break past traditions and systems by introducing new ideas and systems to provoke change and increase momentum. As a CEO, one of my biggest learnings was being comfortable with trying different things, and being open with the organization, so that at times, we were experimenting to see if there was a better way. We should be open, at a minimum, to learn something new about ourselves. 

One thing we tried was a work flexibility model we call 2+2+1 that provided a guide for the working week to be led by specific project requirements, not by the company. The model suggested two days in the office when collaboration was most effective, two days wherever the employee needed deep work time for concentrated tasks, and one day in the real world, that ensured external stimulation away from home or the office. 

We didn’t know whether this would work, but in the spirit of openness, we shared the ambition and asked the organization to be willing to try. We saw positive results from a more balanced attendance over a working week, driven to more innovation within the company from deeper work days where employees could spend higher quality time sharing content and ideas. 

H – Heart 

As our world flips and changes daily, a great leadership learning from my time at Saatchi is what I see as the evolution of the role of modern chief executive officer to chief energy officer. 

Energy is how a company wins in today’s ever-changing world. On a daily basis, it is paramount how you bring the entrepreneurial, empathetic, competitive, and collaborative energy as a leader to ensure that today’s challenges become tomorrow’s opportunities. This was especially important in rebooting the heart of a 50-something-year-old company to ensure it could beat with renewed energy, fizzing ambition, and supportive drive, to guarantee the recalibrated story would win. 

So, be clear on the energy you need to bring and find ways for the company to feel it, follow it, and live it as much as you can, as that is how to create momentum and deliver vision. 

I – Infamy 

We live in an attention economy, where the role of companies and brands is to have clear purpose and meaning in the lives of their talent, the culture they inhabit, and the industry and nation they live in. 

For a 50-year-old company to win in this new world order, we created a mindset of positive infamy to drive our meaning and purpose to ensure it had real momentum to connect. This mindset allowed our company to be clear on what we wanted to be known for and gave clarity to the energy in the things we created for our clients or ourselves to imbue this purpose. 

Whether it was challenging Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over his lack of creative investment in the industry, giving everyone in the company a cost of living bonus to help in times of need, challenging misogyny at the European Women’s Football Championship, UEFA Women’s Euro with our client EE, or selling old Saatchi art to fund a new generation of creatives to enter our industry, positive infamy guided our meaning and purpose. 

Maybe excuse the frivolous S.A.A.T.C.H.I. grouping of the seven learnings, but as I start a new journey creating a modern support system for leaders, there might be some inspiration in first looking back at the things we did.

Chris Kay is founder of andOpen.xyz.