Interview: Carat’s Jo Sutherland

Carat UK CEO Jo Sutherland talks to Michaela Jefferson about getting the business back on track, painful pitches and bringing the positivity back to adland

2018 was a bad year for Carat.

Overall, the centrepiece of Dentsu Aegis’ media offering lost more clients than it won, with early losses including the Government (which, after four years, moved to Omnicom) and Adidas (which was scooped up by WPP’s MediaCom).

Those were painful hits to the agency, Carat’s UK chief executive, Jo Sutherland, says. And as the year went on, the AA, Heathrow Airport, LV= and GoCompare all joined the exodus.

It’s a Monday afternoon when I head across London to meet Sutherland at Carat’s UK headquarters. Outside it’s cold, wet, and miserable, but the inside of the office is all plush velvet sofas, jewel tones and sleek, wooden surfaces. Sutherland is quite careful throughout our interview, slow and deliberate in her answers – but she’s upbeat when we take a tour of the office, joking that the best thing about becoming CEO was being allowed to pick the furniture.

Sutherland took the top job at Carat UK in May 2018, the pinnacle of a media career spanning more than two decades. The agency was already on her CV, with a ten year stint at Carat between 2000 and 2010 culminating in the role of group communications director.

She went on to become chief operating officer at Vizeum, before taking the managing director position at Dentsu’s mobile specialist agency, Fetch, in May 2016.

Aside from the interior decor perks, it’s interesting that she would decide to return to Carat as CEO bang in the middle of what already looked to be a difficult year.

“I mean, when I was first asked it hadn’t been what I was dreaming after,” she says. She had only been at Fetch for two years and likes to aim for three, so she hadn’t planned to move at all.

“But the challenge and the opportunity of it seemed brilliant.”

By the end of 2018, Carat’s fortunes looked revived. The agency won Co-operative Group’s estimated £50 million UK account and managed to retain both Microsoft and the confectionery giant Mondelēz.

Mondelēz’s ‘Donate your words’ campaign. Creative by VCCP and Diagonal View

But 2019 again began on a sour note, as a six-month pitch for L’Oreal ended empty handed when the brand ultimately decided to stay with WPP.

“So was 2019 a good year? I think we wasted loads of energy on a pitch that we didn’t win, and that’s pointless.”

Although Carat learned a lot, the pitch wasn’t a good use of such a large, brilliant team, she says, calling on clients to rethink overly drawn-out pitch processes.

“People should just make the pitch process simpler and shorter. If you’re going to run a certain timeline, you should stick to it.”

A month, for example, would be a less painful time frame for pitching agencies, Sutherland suggests. “I want us to be spending most of our energy on our existing clients.”

Carat had better luck pitching for Vodafone, an account it won in September – and where the L’Oreal pitch was more laborious, Sutherland praises Vodafone as an example of a process that was run with high efficiency. “They did everything at the point that they said they were going to.”

With personal care company Beiersdorf and financial services firm Legal & General both also handing their accounts to Carat by the end of the year, Sutherland rates 2019 overall as good.

“Our conversion rate and the energy that we’re putting in is all positive and in positive motion. And we’re producing really good work on all of our clients that we’re proud of,” she says.

“But I don’t think we’ve done our best work yet.”

With that in mind, Sutherland says Carat is going to kick off 2020 by focusing all of its energy on its existing clients and embedding those three new wins, with the ambition to create the best work possible – and will not be pitching for any new business in the near future.

But without winning new business, how does Sutherland plan on nurturing Carat’s business growth?

“Growth will be in getting close and more connected to [client] challenges,” she counters.

“As someone who runs an agency, the thing that is important is making sure that your staff, your most talented people, are focused on their clients – and you don’t have half your agency running at new business the whole time. I think that’s a challenge for some agencies.”

Co-op’s ‘It’s what we do’ campaign. Creative by Lucky Generals

She might run an agency now, but in 1996, Sutherland joined the ad industry as a graduate at McCann Erickson (now McCann) after weeks of doggedly writing to agencies angling for an interview.

But adland wasn’t her first destination of choice. Inspired by the glamour and sex-appeal of American legal comedy-dramas, Sutherland studied for a law degree in Newcastle – but found the reality to be dull work.

Adland, where the work is about brands and the people seemed “energetic and youthful”, was an enticing alternative.

The people are still the best thing about this industry, she says. “It’s jam-packed full of interesting, nice, funny people who want to do the right thing.” However, she worries that adland is creating a very different perception of itself now than it was 24 years ago – and that’s a problem she thinks could challenge the entire industry in the coming years.

“We’re really down on ourselves as an industry – we’re glass half-empty. Every time you go to a conference or you pick up the trade press or you read about advertising and media, there is such a negativity around it.

“Other sectors don’t do that. I don’t really understand why we are constantly hooked on the same negative topics.”

One such gripe is the repetitive accusation about the demise of the agency, an argument driven in the main by the accelerating number of advertisers in-housing certain specialisms.

According to Dentsu Aegis Network’s ‘CMO Survey 2019’, in-housing’s popularity looks likely to continue in growth, with 92% of 1,000 chief marketing officers and senior marketers across the globe stating that they have plans to maintain or increase their internal digital and programmatic capabilities.

But Sutherland is of the opinion that this is much less alarming than it sounds. “Clients have always done certain specialisms in-house,” she says. “I just don’t think the world has changed that much.

“And actually, in-housing and disruptive forces in the industry make us better.”

Her fear is that by focusing too heavily on negative topics and not boasting the positive aspects of the industry, adland will struggle both to motivate its current workforce and to attract new talent.

“You want advertising and media to be an industry that the next generation want to work in. And I think we’re collectively doing a really bad job of selling the industry and talking about the benefits of it.”

So instead, Sutherland wants to turn the conversation back towards good work and creativity. Too many ads being created now are prioritising the function over the fun, she says – too targeted, too data oriented, too bland.

“A lot of the passion and the creativity that we used to have in the industry, and the humour of advertising, is being eroded,” she says, adding that it’s a huge opportunity lost.

“We’re in the business of getting people to love brands… [and] it’s those things that make people pay a premium.”

Diageo/Guinness’ ‘Made of More’ campaign. Creative by AMV BBDO

For media agencies, it’s therefore crucial to plug into the creative process and ensure the vast quantities of information they have is used to properly influence the look and feel of a brand.

And on top of that, Sutherland believes the best way to reignite the passion within advertising and to inspire a new generation is to talk more about adland’s ability to do good, and to make the world better with its work.

Mondelez-owned Cadbury’s ‘Donate your words’ collaboration with Age UK to fight loneliness, for example, saw 30p donated to the charity for every limited edition bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk sold.

Elsewhere, Guinness’ ‘Made of More campaign’ highlighted female rugby pioneers, with one ad telling the true story of a group of Japanese women in the 1980s, who flew in the face of strict social conventions by forming a rugby team called Liberty Fields RFC.

“You know, we’ve got teams of people falling over each other to work on things like that, because it makes a difference in the world,” Sutherland said. Plus, working on meaningful campaigns empowers agency teams to have more challenging conversations with their clients.

“They can challenge when they think something is too targeted and creepy, or too mundane, and you do get better work.”

As we’re on the subject of great advertising, and as the interview draws to a close, I ask Sutherland for one of her own favourite ad campaigns – but, perhaps proving her point, she struggles in the moment to think of one. She mulls it over later that evening while at home in Hertfordshire where she lives with her husband and three young daughters.

In the end she chooses an ad campaign from the 80s: “If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen.” In one ad, a coiffed-haired woman storms out of large house, presumably having just left her husband, shedding expensive accessories as she goes… Until she gets to her Volkswagen car keys.

If only her husband were as reliable as her car, the ad implies.

Despite the slogan gaining new meaning since VW’s emissions scandal, Sutherland still thinks the ads are “brilliant, because they are fun, clever [and] make you smile”.

“In a world where people are avoiding ads it’s important for agencies to make advertising that people actually want to watch,” she says.

“It’s also beautifully linked to a product benefit – i.e. VW cars are the most reliable. It’s a flexible message that you could play out tactically and have loads of fun with…

“…Megan and Harry. If only everything in life was as reliable as a VW!”