SAGE Secrets of Agency Excellence final line-up revealed, including sessions on building new revenue streams and dealing with procurement
Telstra consumer marketing boss Inese Kingsmill, The Works’ co-founder Kevin Macmillan, Behaviour Change Partners’ Paul Fishlock and media agency owner Virginia Hyland have been announced on the final lineup for Mumbrella’s SAGE – Secrets of Agency Excellence – conference.
Sage advice: Kingsmill, Fishlock, Hyland and Macmillan
The quartet will take part in the SAGE question time panel, which will conclude the event by discussing the key themes of the day including the challenges featuring the agency business model.
Kingsmill is one of the industry’s most senior marketers, with five years leading Telstra’s consumer marketing, and she also chairs the Australian Association of National Advertisers.
Macmillan cofounded The Works, which is one of Australia’s longest established and largest independent creative agencies, with clients including Optus, Woolworths, GSK and Jim Beam.
Fellow independent Hyland is the founder of HM Communication Group, previously known as Hyland Media, with clients including Coty, Steggles, Uber, Adidas.
And Fishlock is one of Australia’s most respected creatives, with his agency Behaviour Change Partners championing the use of behavioural economics, while he was also a co-founder of creative agency BMF (Brown Melhuish Fishlock) and executive creative director of The Campaign Palace.
SAGE, which takes place in Sydney on Thursday 19 November, is curated by Mumbrella deputy editor Nic Christensen. Discounted early bird tickets are available until Friday, with bookings made before then saving $150 per person, or more for groups of five.
Other sessions announced in the final SAGE lineup include lessons from three agency bosses on how they built new revenue streams within their businesses.
Red Agency’s James Wright will talk about his experiential offering Red Guerilla, Mediacom’s Anny Havercroft will present on Mediacom Beyond Advertising, the media agency’s award-winning branded content offering and Emotive’s Jamie Crick will explain how APN News & Media leveraged its relationships to launch what has in less than 12 months become one of Australia’s most successful content agencies.
There will also be a session helping agencies better define their value in terms that procurement people can work with, and helping agencies navigate the intricacies of these client relationships.
TrinityP3’s David Angell, the Portland Group’s John Turner and Westpac’s executive commercial manager Jason Penrose will talk through the best ways to engage in these negotiations, and the strategies that can be used to articulate the value an agency creates and how agencies can build more collaborative relationships.
The final speaker line-up follows last month’s announcement that SAGE will see the co-founder of legendary British advertising agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Peter Mead, appear on stage to deliver the keynote. Mead is also the vice chairman of communications industry holding group giant Omnicom globally, and chairman of Omnicom Europe. He is famed for the culture he created at AMV, which was this month named by AdAge as among the global agencies creatives most wanted to work for.
Mead is the author of the book on agency culture When In Doubt Be Nice: Lessons From A Lifetime in Business, in which he argues that agency bosses do not need to be ruthless to succeed; instead they need to earn the loyalty and belief of their staff.
A further highlight of the event is a session from former STW chief operating officer Chris Savage – one of the most respected agency executives in Australia – delivering a masterclass on pitching and new business pipelines.
Mead
This is the third year Mumbrella has organised SAGE, which is aimed at helping agency leaders learn how to build a successful agency.
Other sessions include: how to manage agency reputations, reinventing the agency business model, what CMOs really think of agencies and the art of buying and selling your agency.
To view the SAGE program and find out how to buy discounted early bird tickets, click here.
