Andrew Swinand, the new North American CEO of Chicago’s iconic advertising agency Leo Burnett, says he was content running the business incubator he co-founded nearly six years ago after leaving Burnett’s media-buying agency Starcom Mediavest Group. Then, he got a call from top executives of Burnett and its parent company, Paris-based Publicis Groupe, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Now, he faces leading Burnett at a time the advertising industry has been roiled by social media, upended by ad-placement companies and still figuring out how to use troves of online data. He sees opportunity “to reinvent the industry” — whose recent wave of change has included Publicis merging its digital network SapientNitro with digital marketing agency Razorfish, which it bought from Microsoft Corp. in 2009. Swinand spoke with Sandra Guy of the Chicago Sun-Times. An edited transcript follows.
Question: How do you deal with challenges the advertising industry is facing?
Answer: I believe we’re 10 to 15 years into one of the most massive changes we’ve ever known in advertising.
So how do we help people embrace change? When you train people to know what technology and data tools can do for them, their creativity exponentially increases. People massively over-invest in technology. It’s just a tool to give you insight into behavior.
Q: You’re bringing with two businesses — the analytics firm Ardent and the digital marketing agency The Abundancy — that were birthed at your incubator, Abundant Venture Partners, to Leo Burnett.
A: We have a very simple formula for starting a company: If I meet five people with the same problem and I know five people who can solve it, that means we’re solving an unmet need.
I want to focus at Leo Burnett on taking everything that’s great about our belief system and making it more of an operating system.
I want to lead a purpose-driven organization and help our partners understand clients’ needs.
And third — looking at the creative as adding value to people’s lives and helping create prosperity for our clients. I’m very committed to the idea of conscious leadership and mindfulness.
Q: Publicis is reshaping its entire organization. How did the call influence you to leave your company?
A: My initial response to Richad Stoddart, CEO of Leo Burnett Worldwide, was, “I can’t think of a worse time to sell.” But they all called — including Maurice Levy, CEO of Publicis Groupe out of Paris, and Arthur Sadoun, global CEO of Publicis Communication, the hub of creative agencies within Publicis Groupe.
The more I learned, the more excited I became. I saw the opportunity to reinvent the industry.
Q: How did your experiences growing up and in the military influence your philosophy?
A: I was born in Camden, N.J. Both my parents were from the Philadelphia area and had big Irish-Catholic families. We moved quite a bit because my dad worked in sales for a number of computer companies. I graduated high school in Massachusetts.
At 17, I found myself with good grades but no money. So I joined the U.S. Army and got an ROTC scholarship. My dad had said he could give me $500 toward college, but I’d gotten into Penn and Georgetown. So being able to have the Army pay for my education was an incredible, lasting benefit.
I became an infantry platoon leader and went to airborne school. I learned a bias for action. You parachute from a plane and land in the woods: You learn every aspect of what is going on around you, and you make things happen. You learn being comfortable making decisions. You make decisions and live by those decisions.
Q: Talk about your interest in mindfulness and meditation.
A: I’ve been practicing meditation for about eight years. A lot of people think about meditation and exercise as a full-on commitment you do once a day. But I’m a fan of “Snackable” — taking it in snack-sized bites. Let’s say you’re in line at Starbucks, and you’re getting aggravated. You can rethink those three minutes as a gift from the universe. They give you the ability to breathe and to be quiet. How many moments do you have to stop during the day? How do you look at the world as giving you the gift of time, rather than as an impediment?
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