James Wright and Kate O'Ryan-Roeder. Credit: Havas
Kate O'Ryan-Roeder, the new chief executive of Havas Media ANZ, spent the best part of two decades inside the Mindshare and WPP machine before walking out in favour of the village model.
O'Ryan-Roeder took the helm at Havas Media this year, inheriting a 120-member team and a client list including Emirates, Red Bull, Puma and Contiki, sitting within the broader Havas Village of around 600 people spanning media, advertising, PR, public affairs and healthcare.
Her years at Mindshare, in Australia and the UK, gave her clarity about what she wanted next.
"That time also gave me real clarity about what I wanted to do next, the type of organisation I wanted to work at, and how I wanted to broaden my skill set and capabilities," O'Ryan-Roeder told AdNews.
Havas's village model was what drew her across. On paper she understood it but being inside of it was a different beast.
"From the outside, you can understand the ambition of the village model. It makes sense on paper. But it's not until you're in seat that you really feel it. It's a real, lived experience. It's tangible," O'Ryan-Roeder said.
Havas Group CEO James Wright said the group has built the village through deliberate acquisition rather than opportunistic consolidation, plugging capability gaps rather than chasing scale.
"We didn't have a regulated healthcare advertising agency, so we bought one. We didn't have registered lobbyists, so we bought a public affairs agency,” he told AdNews.
“We've been covering blind spots within our marketing offering.”
The internal culture, he said, is what determines whether those pieces actually work together.
"The biggest barrier I observe when speaking with people coming out of other organisations is that multiple agencies are essentially competing with each other before they're even competing with the outside world," Wright said.
Part of what sealed O'Ryan-Roeder's decision to join was meeting people across the broader village during the interview process, political lobbyists, healthcare professionals, brand strategists.
"It's a deeply values-led organisation, and I needed to feel that I shared those values,” she said.
“Then when I walked in and was actually in seat, all of that multiplied exponentially.”
Wright, who was involved in the hire alongside stakeholders in Paris and New York, said the decision came down to people skills above almost everything else.
"When you're hiring at the very senior end of town, there's an acceptance that most candidates can probably do the job,” he said.
“So it becomes about who is the right type of person.”
He wanted someone who could bring steadiness to a period of change.
"We needed someone who could bring calmness to that change, someone measured and strategic, but also someone likeable and trustworthy, where you immediately think: clients will buy into this, and so will our people," he said.
His read on O'Ryan-Roeder was confirmed early.
A few weeks into the role Wright asked what had surprised her. Her answer, that the other CEOs across the village had been so welcoming and that the feeling was mutual, was enough.
"That really said something to me, because I talk a lot about the importance of having a leadership group that genuinely works for one another,” he said.
“When you pick up the phone and ask for a favour, it gets done. A rising tide floats all boats, that's very much the culture at Havas, and I take it very seriously.”
The shift from managing director to CEO has required O'Ryan-Roeder to redefine her own contribution.
"As an MD, you're very focused on delivering the output. In this role, it's about utilising and enabling capabilities, we have exceptional depth of expertise in this organisation and aligning those capabilities behind a shared vision, then connecting them," she said.
Her first move as CEO was a listening tour across Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, a discipline, she said, not a formality.
"If you don't listen, if you don't understand and have real comprehension, how can you build a roadmap and take a collective organisation on a journey?" she said.
The three-year roadmap built since she arrived is structured in phases: foundations first, then proving the agency's market positioning, then scale and growth.
O'Ryan-Roeder is clear it was developed in seat, not imported from her previous role.
"You can have ideas and a sense of what you want to achieve, but you bring your own biases if you do too much of that work before you actually get in,” she said.
“You can't put flesh on the bones until you've really listened and understood.”
On transparency, a common pressure point across media agencies, O'Ryan-Roeder was direct.
"You have to have open, informed conversations. You're not going to build trust with anyone if you're not upfront and honest,” she said.
“Some of those solutions might actually be right for a given client, but you can't get there without presenting the facts, working through the pros and cons together, and deciding collaboratively what's right at any point in time.
"It's not a one-off conversation either, it needs to be regularly reviewed."
She said the responsibility extends beyond individual agencies, pointing to work being fed into new frameworks through the MFA and AANA.
"There's both a direct responsibility to individual clients, and a broader responsibility as an industry," O'Ryan-Roeder said.
Wright said Havas Media's ambition in Australia is firmly focused on growth, with the agency's positioning generating interest at a time when competitors are cutting back.
"We've never had a busier start to the year," he said.
For O'Ryan-Roeder, the opportunity and the responsibility are one and the same.
"Havas feels different. That's our opportunity, but it's also our responsibility, for our people and our clients to feel that every single day," she said.
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