Following 2020 Leadership Shakeup, R/GA Says New Team Is Falling Into Place

A little over two years since taking over as R/GA CEO, Sean Lyons says he has a leadership team in place for the agency's latest reinvention. Even for an agency built on "radical transformation," evolution doesn't come without growing pains. Last year saw a leadership exodus at R/GA over the course of months, beginning with global chief experience officer Richard Ting leaving last summer to join Twitter. In September, half a dozen agency leaders left R/GA to form an innovation consultancy, including global chief innovation officer Saneel Radia, global head of brand Mike Rigby and global chief strategy officer Barry Wacksman. But such change has cleared the way to grow opportunities for existing talent and new arrivals, Lyons told Adweek. "I look at the team today, I have the team I want and my clients need," he said. "It’s been wonderful to pull that team together." The new R/GA Lyons' new team started taking shape with the promotion of agency veterans Tiffany Rolfe and Ben Williams to roles as global CCO and global CXO last September as prominent departures were still occurring. R/GA also promoted Jai Tedeschi to vp, global executive director, culture and operations after former global ecd, equity, diversity and inclusion Carl Desir left last year. After ending 2020 by being named global social agency of record for Uber and opening 2021 with an attention-grabbing, blink-and-you'll-miss-it regional Super Bowl ad for Reddit, R/GA filled additional gaps. In February, R/GA hired Public Sapient's Ashish Prashar as its new CMO after former CMO Jess Greenwood left the agency for Apple as one of the senior leaders to depart R/GA last September. Later that month, R/GA promoted Erin Lynch and Shannon Washington to lead its creative department in New York. Lyons explained that the New York office has undergone a reorganization beyond senior leadership in recent months that has allowed for opportunities for internal advancement and new hires. Last week, R/GA also welcomed Tania Secor from Reprise as global CFO. That's not to say there aren't still departures, as associate director, growth and development Harris Baum recently left to join creative production company Tool of North America as director of growth. R/GA Chooses Shannon Washington and Erin Lynch to Lead New York Creative Department Bridging divides, new endeavors Lyons embraces a philosophy of bringing agency disciplines closer together, which may have been part of why six of its leaders broke off to form their own innovation consultancy last year. Rather than viewing consulting services as a separate discipline, R/GA is bringing the practice closer to its other services in an attempt to inform more fluid relationships with clients as the lines blur between marketing and customer experience. Customer experience is an area of the business in which Lyons is well-versed, having began his career working on the first ecommerce site for Tiffany's. He claimed that after the widespread migration to ecommerce in 2020, it was an especially busy part of the business for R/GA as many companies realized they weren't investing enough in the area and turned to agency partners for help. "There's opportunity to innovate, to use existing platforms so that we can get there faster," he added, such as releasing exclusive products like Air Jordan with Snapchat and incorporating such practices into digital events. Other areas where R/GA is focusing on budding opportunities are the overlap of relationship design and loyalty data-driven CRM, where Lyons said he envisioned possibilities driven by automation. "We need to think about how to bring creativity and innovation to those spaces," he said, "to design relationships that benefit the user and you as a brand." R/GA is also focused on the intersection of content and media as clients seek ways to engage consumers where they are and capitalize on opportunities for engagement, utilizing a media team within the agency to ensure media context isn't removed from the creative idea. "Every agency in the world is in the media business. We live and work within media. We look at media as a creative discipline. If you do that, you come up with many creative approaches," he said, pointing to the Reddit Super Bowl stunt as emblematic of the philosophy. Going forward, he said R/GA plans to build on its ability to deliver quality content at scale, utilizing existing tools and developing its own software to work more efficiently.