‘I’ve come back to quite a different environment’: Publicis CCO Dave Bowman talks returning to adland
On a new episode of Mumbrella’s one-on-one podcast, Publicis Groupe’s first ANZ chief creative officer shares how he was surprised by what he saw upon his return to adland.
When Dave Bowman took on the new role last year, he had no idea what was in store.
Having spent the better part of a decade in adland – including launching Special Group alongside Lindsey Evans, Matty Burton and Cade Heyde – before jumping over to Google in 2017, Bowman thought his return would be seamless. But, it was quite the opposite.
“In the time where I’d extracted from the industry, the people who have survived… the last sort of five or 10 years in the business, people who have managed to reinvent themselves, learn new skills, I suppose, blur the edges of where the start and stop used to be for what they did and start kind of going, ‘I’m actually going to wander over here’ you know, connect with this person or this team or this business,” he told host Neil Griffiths.
“So I feel like I’ve sort of come back to a quite a different environment… I couldn’t find a counterpoint in the industry, certainly locally.
“And since coming on board, (Publicis CEO Michael Rebelo) has also sort of been able to identify a couple of other areas of specialism in data and in media and elevated Imogen Hewitt and Maurice Riley to, kind of, represent those two specialisms.
“So we’re now like a little bit of a triumvirate that are sort of madly trying to take our individual specialisms across all of those businesses and see what’s possible.”
Listen to the full episode here.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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