Twitter will take off again, according to its second time lucky CEO, while the leader of newly minted WPP AUNZ revealed the scope of change coming, Rosie Baker writes.
There's a lot in this issue that has made me think about leadership. Leadership and change. I sat down with Twitter's billionaire CEO Jack Dorsey as he was in the country for the first time. He was here to launch Square, the payment platform that started in the US seven years ago, but it would be rude not to do Twitter business too. He's been back on board at Twitter as CEO for just six months.
Twitter is preparing to report its Q1 earnings on 26 April, noting at the end of Q4 in 2015 its ad revenue increased by about 48%.
Despite this, it still made a loss of around US$90 million. The road is not an easy one, but Dorsey is confident in the way he speaks about turning it around and focusing on the thing Twitter is good at – live moments.
Before that, I had sat down with Mike Connaghan, CEO of newly minted communications group WPP AUNZ, just hours after the mammoth merger of STW Group and Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP was passed by shareholders. Connaghan spoke candidly about the scope of change coming down the line for the group and the agencies within it over the coming months – how that shakes out will be an ever–evolving journey. The group is massive, and Connaghan, who had led the STW Group is taking it on “for as long as Sir Martin will have me”.
Dorsey and Connaghan lead complex businesses. Both have had a troubled 18 months. But it struck me that there's something very different about a founder and a CEO. Connaghan is in business, but there is an air of something else about Dorsey. He is unwavering in what he sees as the vision behind, and in front of, Twitter. He's cool calm and collected, even when batting off talk of the platform’s tough performance, waning growth and the challenge in front of him as CEO second time around. Something that can perhaps only come from building a company from the ground up. You can read the interview (or as much of it we could fit in) in the magazine. Download here.
We've also announced Dr Karen Nelson-Field as the keynote speaker for the Media Summit on 19 May. Mostly known as an associate professor at the University of South Australia and her history with Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, she is soon to embark on a new venture as the CEO of Media Intelligence Co., an artificial intelligence and machine learning firm. Her presentation will blow more than a few cobwebs away at the start of the day, so don't miss it.