The granddaddy of Australian advertising Clemenger BBDO, at almost 80 years old, is focusing on improving agency culture and producing the industry's best creative work under its CEO Dani Bassil.
Bassil is Clemenger’s first national leader, after the agency combined the Melbourne and Sydney offices following the resignations of both Melbourne’s CEO Jim Gall and Sydney’s CEO Brent Kerby.
The consolidation was an 'absolute no-brainer’ as the brand was split for 'too long' and definitely improved agency culture Bassil told AdNews. As a combined team, Clemenger is currently 180 people, with Melbourne remaining the larger part.
In her first year Bassil has been on a hiring spree, most recently appointing Simon Wassef as chief strategy and experience officer last week.
Dani Bassil with new hires: Anita Deutsch-Burley managing partner, Georgie Winton managing partner and Anita Zanesco chief growth officer.
“Whether I’m talking to clients or trying to recruit, Clemenger has heart and heritage that people want to be involved with,” Bassil said.
This philosophy is what led her to the CEO role.
Like most Australians at 27, Bassil went to the UK on a two year working holiday visa but - maybe less commonly - forgot to come back home and stayed for 20 years.
Over that time Bassil worked at Mother, Wieden + Kennedy, VCCP, Grey London and more before finally running one of the country’s largest and most successful agencies, Digitas UK, for over five years until her desire to come back home was too great.
Bassil also took her time to move back, spending two years chatting with Australian connections and engaging with on-the-ground businesses, until she got a ‘too good to say no to’ brief from Clemenger.
“The brief from Robert Morgan and Les Timar was very simple - we've got this incredible agency brand that arguably ‘put Australian creativity on the global stage’ and we want you to lead it into the future,” Bassil said.
Despite having big ambitions to take one of Australia’s most heritage advertising agencies into the next era, the DNA of Clems will remain at its core.
“We’ve always been brilliant at creating big brand platforms, we’re a creative business at the heart and we always will be,” Bassil said.
However, Clemenger will change to be more focused on digital-first as COVID accelerated the adoption of being online.
“Moving forward we’re launching a social PR and influencer practice, relaunching the agency’s proposition under our new chief strategy and experience officer, investing more into CX and content production,” Bassil said.
Bassil is also focused on boosting diversity in Clemenger’s agency culture, with the newly formed DEI&B (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) council.
“Empowering the DEI&B team to make change will be one of the most challenging but rewarding things we will do in the history of Clemenger BBDO,” Bassil said.
“I think we have a really good culture, but it's going to take more than what we're doing now to create a truly diverse team of people.
“The only real way to be truly diverse is to have people within your business with different lived experiences and share them as being just a part of life. That's why belonging is such an incredible word, because it's about creating a different type of culture.”
Despite all the change, Bassil will not be spending a lot of resources on labelling the agency’s proposition and market difference.
“[Instead] the work speaks for itself,” Bassil said.
“Clients like agencies that create incredible work and that's also where people want to work with people that they respect.
“I think it's actually simple, but we tend to overcomplicate it with buzzwords, and I've seen every proposition under the sun, but I don't see the work to back that up.
“A proposition can be the best proposition in the world, but for me, the work speaks for itself.”
When asked what her favourite work has been under Clems, despite the campaign receiving mixed opinions from industry punters, Bassil said The Australian Youth Climate Coalition's 'NewsJacker' campaign.
Creative from NewsJacker Campaign.
“We’re interested in working with clients that have incredible ambition and we love the creative application of solving problems,” Bassil said
“The problem here is people get served misinformation and when I saw the work I thought it was absolutely incredible - this is where technology can play its part in making things right.
“Agencies hold some of the brightest minds on the planet, but we tend to only apply that creative thinking to advertising. So what if we use that creative application to solve other problems?
“I think there's a bright future for agencies in that space if we can get it right.”
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