What just happened at Ikon?
As gobsmackers go, last night’s announcement on the departure of Dan Johns from Ikon was up there.
One of the architects of one of Australia’s all-too-rare local media agency success stories, his exit after a decade with the agency is a shock.
While Johns wasn’t there quite from the beginning, he was close to the agency’s original DNA.
And that’s admirable DNA.
When I chat to contacts in the market, I often ask about their relationships with agencies. If I ask media owners who will support new ideas, or are easiest to deal with, the answer tjhat comes back more than half the time is Ikon. When I ask agencies from other disciplines who is easiest to collaborate with, they also answer Ikon.
It wasn’t a surprise when Ikon won the culture of the year award at last year’s Mumbrella Awards. They were also the top scoring agency in the Mumbrella Media Agency Review last year. And they were Mumbrella’s media agency of the year in 2011.
Looking back now, there were a couple of hints that the band was breaking up. Annik Perrin’s move to Initiative in September was a big move. She was credited with being a major force behind Ikon’s formidable culture.
Then national trading director Nicole Turley left for a role at Starcom.
Even then though, it all seemed understandable – Ikon is known for having good people, so they make good poaching targets.
But even as Ikon was announcing wins, including Labor’s election campaign, the departures were continuing. And then communications director Tom Rankin shifted to UM Sydney.
But when I spotted the 8pm press release in my inbox, Johns departure was still a complete shock.
So where to from here?
In large part, that depends on Simon White, who along with Gary Hardwick co-founded the business.
STW has announced White is now the organisation’s media chairman, a title which sees him overseeing both Ikon and Bohemia, which White helped launch in late 2011. That launch, incidentally, saw the departure of director Brett Dawson from Ikon.
Matters wouldn’t have been helped when Bohemia took the Vodafone strategy account off Ikon in August.
But White’s role raises a few questions. Is a merger between the two agencies on the cards? Is White’s role a full time one, or more a title to keep the clients happy that the old faces are still around? Given the many millions White made from the sale of Ikon, I can;t see him going back to five days a week.
And of course, will STW be able to keep Johns in some other role? He would, I suspect, be able to walk into a job at any agency – or media owner – he wanted. I suspect that the line in the announcement about trying to keep him in the family will be little more than spin.
Meanwhile digital director Ellie Rogers and people and culture director Leonie Kerley are among those out of the door today.
Clearly somebody in the senior ranks at STW has a new plan.
I don’t think we’ve yet heard anything like the whole story yet. But it’s starting to look more like a coup than a transition.
Tim Burrowes
Linkedin
This is a symptom of a much wider malaise across media agencies, and if Paul McIntyre in AdNews (sorry Tim, not trying to promote a rival….) is correct the Ikon crew wanted to fess up to clients and drive greater transparency from their trading desk activity.
Media agencies are hopelessly conflicted when they are both the media buyer and the supplier (via their trading desks). You can’t blame the agencies, as the margins are so attractive, but if their trading desks are so great at what they do, then they should compete on an equal footing with independent trading desks, and DSPs. From our perspective, we definitely see agency trading desks buying super-cheap inventory (one of Ikon’s bigger clients turns up on some very interesting sites…) and, anecdotally selling it at market rates.
One wonders if agencies need to split their trading desks out as separate businesses, or work more to a fee for service or fixed %?
M
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DSPs are a great money maker for media agencies – buy up lge amounts of unsold….and so called ‘premium’ inventory on the short term and on sell it to clients who have agreed to prices that seam too good. nobody ever really knows what the margin is but would be fun to have a publisher chat to a client direct wouldn’t it…..
All said and done if this is the case we should all be able to understand the announcements – management weren’t happy with the ethical practices to their clients and have done something about it……..let’s just hope the rest of the industry moves in the same direction when it comes to any sort of DSP – especially with video trading deks…..who knows where, when, and to who blind video buys are being shown and also at what margin?
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The trading desk issue needs to be put into perspective. The main problem is transparency, some trading desks aren’t charging very much at all, some are. The problem is that none of them will reveal the fees. Most however charge less than an ad network so the clients are getting a better deal anyway.
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The have the ALP account … mirroring Canberra perhaps.
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Does Ikon still hold the ALP account? Now who is up for some Synergy?
Unlike the ALP, I hope they get through this and the great people there arent negatively affected by all of this. Im sure Whitey can get his house in order
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I’ve been in this industry a long time and worked at IKON. I feel sorry for the young people entering this industry. It’s an unstable, unpredictable merry go round. In particular, clients hate it when this sort of thing happens. Witness what happened in Melbourne when a long term IKOn senior staffer was marched out the door because of a personality conflict with the new boss….the consequences? Accounts were lost. It’s about time staffers were told the truth instead of all this subterfuge and cover up. Stability is the key to success but most of the time egos just get in the way.
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Served.
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there goes the annual agency of the year nomination..
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@Dan …. yeah Tim, you cursed them 🙂
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I sense some sour grapes from honesty knows best. Sometimes you have to cut some dead weight to move ahead
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Karma karma karma chameleon to the People and Culture club
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Came across http://www.adweek.com/news/tec.....web-148032 which was published a day or two before the ikon bldepartures.
Some of the sites mentioned in the article have major Aussie brand ads running.
If you check some of the sites mentioned in available traffic estimation tools, it is clear that they have been gaming their stats and ad impressions (likely with bots and/or malware).
I didn’t notice any ads from ikon advertisers running today, but I wonder if any were running before the bloodshed began.
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