You could hardly get two more different men: Stephen Carter, the
new chief executive of J. Walter Thompson, and his predecessor, Dominic
Proctor, now the chief operating officer of the agency’s global media
network, MindShare (Campaign, last week).
An insider explains: ’If people had been allowed to sign a book of
condolence for Dominic’s leaving, there would have been queues outside
the door.
We are in an industry of nice people who like to be liked. Stephen
manages by discomfort.’ Certainly, Carter entertains no illusions about
his popularity. ’I don’t think they were blowing up balloons in the
corridors when they heard the news,’ he says, candidly.
For while Proctor derived his authority from a combination of natural
gravitas and mateyness, Carter is reserved, even occasionally edgy. He
can be rude and abrupt: dressings down from him have become legendary.
William Eccleshare, Ammirati Puris Lintas’s chief executive, formerly a
senior executive at JWT, explains: ’He doesn’t suffer fools at all
gladly.
He is good with good people but with people who needed nurturing I felt
he could lack patience.’
To be fair, the steely reputation may have been forced upon him.
’Dominic sussed out that Stephen didn’t have bonhomie,’ Kevin May, an
account handler at TBWA Simons Palmer who’s known Carter for years,
believes. ’So he used him to give bad news. At least Stephen will now
have the opportunity to be the bearer of good tidings as well.’
Perhaps good tidings will turn up soon but, for the moment, things need
sorting. Carter began his reign with the assessment: ’JWT is not at the
top of its game. We have had a quiet year in new business and the work
we are producing is not as good as it should be.’
Last year wasn’t great. The agency lost Andrex on a global basis and
Dulux across Europe. It was forced to resign its local client, Esso, to
make way for global Shell business; domestic new-business gains were
almost non-existent and the work has been solid but with few
highlights.
JWT London, observers said, had lost its specialness, increasingly
typecast as a regional outpost of a global network. But the people
responsible for this state of affairs include Carter: he’s been its
managing director for three years, and was the deputy managing director
for two years before that. What was he doing?
Carter outlines some excuses for JWT’s lacklustre showing: ’We
concentrated on building our international business over the past five
years, which sapped a lot of energy. Internally, we have encouraged
people to move from advertising solutions to communications solutions.
The media thing has taken a lot of energy. Put all those things together
with competition from strong local and international agencies and you
can see how it happened. But we haven’t been completely asleep,
otherwise we’d be the tenth agency in London, not the second.’
Fresh from a three-month course at Harvard Business School, Carter plans
a shake-up. ’It’s not my intention to be manager of the status quo. Our
agency is in a position of change. If we want to be at the top of the
game, quoting our dead ancestors isn’t going to make us a compelling
option.’ Martin Sorrell, chief executive of JWT’s parent company, WPP,
approves of Carter’s no-nonsense approach: ’Restless discontent is what
every company needs. Not being satisfied with the status quo is to be
complimented,’ he says.
Martin Jones, formerly JWT’s head of new business, now the managing
director of the Advertising Agency Register, takes up that theme:
’Stephen’s exceptional at getting people to be better, he hates the
status quo. You always knew when he was in the agency. He makes a
palpable difference.’ Similarly, Jones’s successor at JWT, Mark
Robinson, respects Carter’s focus: ’Work moves at a pace when he’s
around.’
For ten years Carter has been loyal to JWT. It was clear he’d reach the
top. However, he’s said to have been on the brink of leaving for Lowes
before becoming deputy managing director in 1993. Harry MacAuslan, JWT’s
deputy chairman, elaborates: ’The most remarkable thing was he was given
a job that didn’t exist. He wrestled to acquire responsibilities that
weren’t there. He managed to create a role.’
Openly ambitious, Carter attracts the sort of ribbing usually given to a
head boy at school. May, who lived with Carter in the early years at
JWT, characterises him as a control freak. ’He is incredibly fastidious
and tidy. In the middle of conversations he’d start hoovering or
emptying ashtrays when you were in the middle of a cigarette,’ he
laughs. Throughout his meteoric rise, Carter has been the butt of jokes
(in the in-house satirical magazine, he was known as ’the Chosen
One’).
Nick Welch, formerly JWT’s creative director, now APL’s executive
creative director, pinpointed Carter’s rise when he was still a junior
account man. ’Some people hide their ambition. Stephen’s is very clear,’
he explains. Similarly, May describes Carter as ’a man unfamiliar with
self-doubt. He has the capacity to seem authoritative even when he might
be out of his depth.’
Yet Carter is self-conscious about being elevated to chief executive at
just 33; in photographs he tends to compensate for this by adopting an
awkward appearance of maturity. And there are other signs of
self-consciousness.
Carter claims he is far from being the typical JWT man: he’s not English
(he’s Scottish) and he didn’t attend a public school or Oxbridge (he
read law in Aberdeen).
Thankfully, he is by no means without appeal. He chats warmly and openly
about his plans for the agency, drinking a can of Diet Coke with his
feet sprawled on the table. It’s easy to see how he can be ’blisteringly
charming’, as MacAuslan says. Jones has seen Carter cajole initially
hostile clients into eating from his hand: ’He’s transformed pitch
disasters,’ he confirms. And colleagues say he’s lightened up since the
birth last year of his son, Max. (His wife is Anna Gorman, APL’s
managing partner.)
Controversially, Carter has decided not to appoint a managing director,
despite claims that the agency now looks worryingly lightweight. JWT’s
senior - and most famous - talents, including Miles Colebrook and Allen
Thomas, have been promoted away from the London agency into JWT Europe
and Worldwide. But if you invite Carter to consider the heavyweight
management of similar-sized rivals, such as M&C Saatchi and Abbott Mead
Vickers BBDO, he laughs, saying: ’I wonder what on earth they all
do.’
In one respect, Carter may find the agency more manageable than it has
been thus far. With the media side hived off, staff numbers have dropped
from 450 to 350. JWT, however, still has more creative teams than any
other agency in London, an astonishing 35 (AMV, the UK’s number-one
agency and one of the finest creatively, has only 16 teams). Quantity,
of course, is not the same as quality. Jaspar Shelbourne, the executive
creative director, has trumpeted improvements but Carter remains aware
of a problem.
One-off ads like Tussaud’s are OK, he says, but JWT isn’t coming up with
the big long-runners for which it was once famous: ’When I’m in the pub
with my mates, they don’t say often enough ’I love that campaign’.’ His
solutions, however, sound a little flat: ’Concentrate on it. Make sure
everybody knows it’s a priority. Build time into the system. Seek to
attract and keep the best talent in the market.’
A former colleague gives this advice: ’If I were Stephen I’d appoint
some really famous names in all disciplines. Otherwise people will say:
’You haven’t worked anywhere else - in another market or outside JWT.
When you talk about communication how can you have any idea what you are
talking about?’’
Jones is more generous. ’If I still worked at the agency I’d feel
excited by its potential. It has survived so long on its values. Stephen
can give it the step change it needs.’
