Leagas Delaney’s Gareth Davies on managing the indie agency through generational change

There’s been nothing gradual about the generation change that Davies alludes to.

The transformation of human attitudes, behaviors and societal norms has been accompanied in our sector by additional complexities – streamlined business structures, evolving revenue and remuneration models, hybrid ways of working, rising employee expectations, growing reliance on technology, marketing platforms and channels and increasingly complex data requirements and usage are all combining to whip up what Davies says is the biggest generational change the marketing sector has faced in, well, quite a few generations. But Davies is clear on whose shoulders managing Leagas Delaney through that change rests. His.

“It’s the sole responsibility of every CEO to understand what this generational change means for their agency, for their clients and for their teams and all CEOs need to be building a plan to plot a successful course through this period of huge change,” he says. No pressure.

Affecting rapid change

Davies joined Leagas Delaney after a 12-year career with Havas UK, where he rose from business director to global managing partner. Today, he works closely with Leagas Delaney’s global CEO, Margaret Johnson OBE, and appears to actively relish, maybe even enjoy, the challenge and associated high pressures of steering the agency through this unprecedented period of challenge and uncertainty. That said, he acknowledges that as the CEO of an independent agency, he is perhaps more able to affect rapid change than his opposite numbers in networked behemoths at groups such as WPP, Omnicom or Publicis.

“As CEO of an independent agency, I do have a lot of responsibility, but I also have greater permission to make and influence change here. I think the path for other CEOs is less certain. Frankly, less influence means that they often need to look to their holding company for guidance. And depending on the appetite for change in that holding company, affecting change may be slower than they might like.”

Speaking to Davies, you quickly get the impression that he’s not the type to sit twiddling his CEO thumbs, simply waiting for things to happen.

As an agency, Leagas Delaney was quick (maybe even quickest) to recognize the opportunities artificial intelligence offered agencies by introducing AI to its internal workflows to improve efficiencies as an effective advertising supplier. Its AI-powered CreativeOS asset automation system has already been in place for around a decade and has already been spun out into a standalone offering – CreateTotally – under the guidance of Margaret Johnson.

During his time steering the good ship LD, Davies has taken a hands-on approach in navigating his agency towards the AI-powered future that inevitably awaits all agencies. He certainly doesn’t come across as the type of CEO to brief his tech or research team to figure this AI thing out and bring him the answers. If there’s to be a plan, it’ll be his.

In March 2023, Davies penned an article for The Drum outlining his thoughts on where AI was heading. A year-plus down the line, are his views still on point? “The landscape around AI has dramatically changed since I wrote that article. The truth is, up until now too few credible solutions were available. The real change in the last 18 months is the discourse around technology and the subsequent democratization has given every marketer permission to genuinely explore new ways of working. That has inevitably led to conversations around how marketing money is spent, what talent is needed to deliver work and so on.”

The driver of agency evolution

The Leagas Delaney that inhabits 2024 will not be the same one that will inhabit 2034. 10 days is a long time in marketing, let alone 10 years. What the agency of the future will look like is, for Davies, a known unknown, but he feels that current hysteria around AI is stunting an important conversation for CEOs. “As AI and genAI continue to evolve, agencies will naturally change too. What an agency will be and be responsible for in the future is still up in the air as we wait for the AI ball to land. I don’t think what an agency will be in the future is being talked about enough. GenAI is sucking up a lot of the oxygen in the debate around AI, certainly in advertising circles. However, I think that the more significant impact of AI will be delivered through automation technology. We talk about that as being a sort of quiet revolution, if you like, because it’s less spoken about, less present in the discourse. But I think its impact will be truly significant.”

As a CEO, Davies is naturally, deep down, a numbers man and it’ll inevitably be ‘the numbers’ that decide what the agency of the future looks like. We may be a creative business, but the numbers will always be the real guv’nor.

“If you look at the numbers that it’s doing, it’s already reimagining efficiencies within agencies. It’s delivering production 10 times faster than manual methods and around 60% to 70% cheaper. Those aren’t marginal gains. Those are significant shifts in the way things are being done. So, I think the large-scale adoption of that tech will eliminate complexity from agencies and any complexity that’s associated with the mass creation of assets across multiple channels and multiple markets. That will reimagine the agency landscape and many of the roles that are recognizable within an agency today.

“It is beholden for agencies not only to think about AI but to also think about what their business models will be in the future and decide what business they are fundamentally going to be in. You might be a best-in-class creative agency. If so, what commercial models can you prescribe to the work you do and the value you give to your ideas? Or perhaps you’ll be an end-to-end service, in which case you’ll need to build a robust per asset pricing plan.”

What’s driving Gareth Davies?

Putting AI and where it is driving agencies to one side, it’s pertinent to find out what drives Davies himself and, ultimately, where he is heading as an agency leader. He has experienced leadership in a huge networked agency and now he has had a taste of the independent life. For him, the journey has always been more important than the destination and, as he explains, that journey still excites him despite a future that will inevitably involve some theory conversations as his agency is forced to evolve. “This is still an industry that is genuinely full of possibilities, unusually shaped challenges, unknown unknowns and it’s a cliché, but every day is different. Despite all the questions that the industry poses, despite the headwinds that we find ourselves walking into, I think there’s still a great deal to be optimistic about and it frustrates me, therefore, when our industry talks itself down, when it accepts the status quo, when it doesn’t embrace change... I find that quite hard to fathom.

“We stand genuinely on the edge of a technology-led revolution, one that I believe will supercharge our creativity, yet many marketers choose to spend time focusing on what’s not possible and what can’t be done. I think if we take more risks, if we are collectively braver, we could achieve a lot more. Anyone will tell you I have a lack of patience with solutions that are not positive. I want to look forward and I struggle to deal with everything that I think looks backward and is overtly negative.”

The Drum already has a date in Davies’s 2029 online (probably AI-powered) diary to discuss his first full decade leading Leagas Delaney. Like most agencies, it’ll no doubt look different, but Davies probably won’t. He knows who he is and what he stands for. Pressed for five words to sum Gareth Davies up, he says: “Dad. Husband. CEO. Hundred percent.” His last one is ‘technically’ cheating (and laughs in the face of The Drum’s style guide, sorry Ed), but you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs and Davies seems quite prepared to crack a few along the way to get Leagas Delaney to where he needs it to be.