AltaCircle Drivel

I started my interactive agency career at Modem Media in the US in 1995 as a Columbia MBA intern and was immediately sent off to New Jersey seconded at AT&T.  The task was to determine the cost savings if printed sales collateral were published to an electronic salesforce tool called MyPartner instead of printing it. We weren’t unbiased–we knew the sales team was leaving the beautiful dimensional DM and 4-colour brochures in the trunks of their cars. We also knew how much was stacked up in a beautiful warehouse waiting to be sent off to various regional offices. It was fun.

After joining full time, I worked in a new team Doug Ahlers set up as part of Modem’s IPO planning called The Relationship Technology Group.  The idea was we would look for commercial applications in the general work we did as an agency and productize them.  It made logical sense — for example we saw an engineer create a bespoke IM app for a client well before ICQ — but pretty quickly we realized how different product businesses are from services businesses.  And that an ICQ is a success because of the execution, not the idea.

During this time I also ran around to various VCs with John Houston to get funding for one of his first projects (Worldtrek- bought by a research company in the end) and and then sold in an intranet strategy project to AT&T UK.  This had me join the original Modem UK team of Norm Johnston and Glenn White in setting up a London office.  After 8 weeks in a hotel, working first in a tiny serviced office and then an unloved room in the back of FCB’s offices on St. Martin’s Lane, I came back to CT.  Pretty quickly I was recruited by ex-Modemite Mia McNeice to join Mike Golden as we set up Organic in NY, initially as Director of Business Development and then Director of Strategy.

In 1999, after working on the Chrysler pitch and assimilation of Ross Roy’s Interactive team in Detroit, I dodged a fulltime posting in the Motor City by winning boo.com in NY and being lucky that SF won HP’s ecommerce business, including HP Europe.  This gave us the revenue we needed to go with our business plan to set up a new office in London.

It was a high growth time and the American accent did wonders — we took the business from start up to 100 people strong within two years.   Later when bottom fell out despite having moved into Tequila’s offices off Cambridge Circus, we were down to only BT as a client.  Agency.com London was also down to only T-Mobile which encouraged Omnicom to act — we closed the Organic office and took the team and client over to Agency.com.

I completed the transition over 3 months working with Andy Hobsbawm and company but decided it was time to try an established agency, so I bought a wooden boat, took 3 months off to do restoration and moved to join Simon Hall at Proximity London as Head of Digital Services.  Not as daring as it sounds — we had had a partnership when we first set up Organic in London and Proximity was still BHWG.

Unquestionably the best work there I did there with the team was winning the full digital business for Royal Mail.  Although working on the global, worldwide, integrated Omnicom network response for HSBC was also fun.  After a year my remit expanded a bit as we worked to form a network out of BBDO’s newly rebranded direct agencies — I was given a classically random title:  Worldwide Digital Champion.

In 2004, the call of entrepreneurship hit again and I moved back to the US to open a business with my brother Godfrey.  The business was  AzureAviation which was an Internet application service for scheduling and marketing private aircraft. This hit a host of problems particularly in finance and ended up with the two of consulting to pay the bills which didn’t bode well for building the business so I looked at choices.

It was either Boston with BzzAgent or CharterAuction (now Jets.com) where I was consulting, Philadelphia with GSI Commerce (an old Organic client) or at the eleventh hour, London with OgilvyOne.  I joined Ogilvy in 2006 as Managing Partner, Client Service Director, OgilvyOne and Head of Ogilvy Interactive (Ogilvy does take its titles very seriously).  Unquestionably the biggest and most professional agency I’ve worked in — although the OgilvyInteractive part had already been solidly integrated.  Best work there was redesigning Brand Republic and expanding the Unilever business working on Vaseline and Flora.

In 2008 it was George Nimeh that introduced me to Ian Millner and Sam Noble at iris.  He had built the team from 6 to 15 and the agency had decided to make the digital team a dedicated group with its own P&L and management.  Since March 2008 I have been joint-Managing Director, iris Digital London and the adventure continues.  Ironically it appears there may be travel on the cards which would take me back to my first consulting job (after I stopped painting houses) at AIRINC.  Be good to be working in strange places again.