Fitzco Founder and CEO Dave Fitzgerald Is Retiring; Evan Levy Steps Into the Role

After 50 years in the business, Dave Fitzgerald is set to implement his exit plan from the ad industry. When Fitzgerald bought Fitzco back from IPG three years ago, he did so with the intention of stepping aside from the shop by his upcoming 75th birthday in February. He will officially hand the agency's reins to CEO-in-waiting Evan Levy on Nov. 1. Levy joined the agency in 1996, leaving it briefly to attain an MBA from Northwestern, and held a variety of roles in account management, creative and most recently COO and president. Fitzgerald will retain his ownership of the agency and maintain an advisory role after Nov. 1. The agency has doubled its revenue and headcount since becoming independent again, now up to about 120 employees. The fully integrated agency grew roughly 30% year over year with a strong new business streak that fetched 10 new clients, including Shipt, Welch's, Hilton and Waymo. Levy and Fitzgerald sat down with Adweek to explain how Fitzco's new way of working, called Unleashing Energy, is driving the agency's success, and Fitzgerald gave advice to independent agencies on how to navigate potentially selling and buying back your business. "Under his leadership, we doubled once; under my leadership, we will double again," Levy told Adweek. "Because what the team is, if nothing else, is hungry." Unleashing energy The agency has increased its new business win rate to 75% since implementing its Unleashing Energy way of working, compared to 51% in the prior year. The agency built Unleashing Energy in order to have a clear roadmap to show clients for how Fitzco will address their challenges. Levy explained how it works: Stored energy: Every brand has it—could be a product, positioning, purpose or heritage, for example. "We don't assume that a client is coming in and everything they're doing is wrong," Levy said.Blocks: The agency identifies what it believes is preventing the stored energy from reaching its full potential. This could be anything from operations to its audience or previous messaging. New energy: "New energy could come in the form of a creative platform, a complete redefinition of the audience or a PR plan," Levy said. "Nothing's sacred as far as what that output looks like."Return on energy: This is what the agency expects its new energy to deliver for the client. The agency is rolling out this platform across all capabilities over the next year, Levy said, including media and analytics, which the shop bolstered in 2021 when it bought boutique firm Constant Analytics. Levy also credits how the agency determines what business it will chase as another factor in its new biz success. Every discipline in the agency evaluates briefs, even if it's a creative brief, to talk through how they can attack the problem. Fitzgerald added that 100% of the stakeholders have to be on board for the agency to pursue a piece of business. And if it loses, Fitzgerald said the agency doesn't sulk or look to assign blame; it learns from the experience, dissecting the issues and maintaining transparency into what the reasons were for the loss in order to improve. Should you sell? Fitzgerald sold to IPG in 1998, 15 years after he founded the agency. The shop became part of McCann's network of agencies, and in 2016 Fitzgerald retired. But the hold co shop worked with Fitzgerald to have him buy the agency back in January 2020. When a holding company approaches an agency to buy it, Fitzgerald said the most important thing for an agency owner and their partners to evaluate is why the holding company wants to buy the shop. "Are they doing it to prop up this quarter's revenue? And if that's the case, get out because they're just going to treat it like a number," Fitzgerald said. A holding company has to have a clear strategic vision for your agency, and if they do "continue the conversation," Fitzgerald added and he stressed a strong culture needs to be in place before selling the shop because building one after is exceedingly difficult. "The culture of an agency is much more critical than the strategic direction of the agency," he said. "You could have the most brilliant strategic direction, but if you don't have the ethos, the culture of the agency behind it, you're going to fail."