At Proto, a Consultancy Started by Former R/GA Leaders, 'We Are Creating New Things'

In September, a slew of R/GA leaders—six, to be exact—left the agency to form an unnamed innovation consultancy. Roughly 100 days in, its founders have gotten around to sharing its name, Proto, in addition to details regarding how it will operate and work with clients. Proto is the latest in a string of consultancies that cropped up last year, all started by former agency executives who’ve expressed a desire to work with clients in ways that go beyond advertising and campaigns. Pltfrmr, for instance, was founded last year by former TBWA and McDonald’s executives. At the time of the consultancy’s launch, they said they don’t intend to create campaigns, but rather build long-term platforms for brands. Slap Global, a “business accelerator” co-founded in 2020 by Gerry Graf, founder of now-shuttered creative agency Barton F. Graf, has also positioned itself as a company that goes far beyond the confines of so-called traditional advertising. Proto is largely made up of people who’d worked in R/GA’s consulting practice, perhaps giving it a leg up on others. Saneel Radia, CEO of Proto, previously served as R/GA’s global chief innovation officer, a position that involved leading the agency’s consulting arm. Barry Wacksman, who spent many years at R/GA, most recently as global chief strategy officer, is serving as Proto’s chairman. Its chief operating officer Colby Dennison, chief experience officer Rachel Mercer, chief design officer Mike Rigby and chief strategy officer Philip Rackin also join from R/GA’s consulting practice. Proto’s chief technology officer, To Anh Tran, is the only founder who did not join from R/GA. According to her LinkedIn, she formerly served as global vice president of digital technology at Thomson Reuters. Backing from WPP According to Wacksman, the founders’ decision to break from R/GA and go out on their own stemmed from a desire to be unaffiliated with a particular agency. “The thing that we’d built inside of R/GA, which was working really well, actually would be even more powerful if it was untethered from an agency brand,” he explained. Even so, Proto has received a minority investment from WPP; it has not shared what the holding company's stake in the consultancy is. Wacksman said having WPP’s backing allows the consultancy to “serve all of the different agencies and all the different clients within a holding company,” while Radia said it gives Proto the ability to pull in “diverse expertise” from the wider network when needed. “I’m delighted that WPP will be partnering with the Proto team to build a unique innovation consultancy, bringing together a mix of strategic, creative and technology skills,” Mark Read, CEO of WPP, said in a statement. “As we come out of Covid, I consistently hear clients tell me that they need to innovate faster and more effectively. The Proto team have a proven track record in delivering innovation and transformation, which I have no doubt will bring competitive advantage to clients.” At the moment, Proto has four clients. Two are in the retail space, one is in healthcare and another is a nonprofit. At the moment, Proto has 15 full-time employees, but expects to have 25 by the end of the first quarter of this year. Radia said Proto will largely rely on full-time employees instead of freelancers. While its employees are working remotely as of now because of the pandemic, he said Proto is headquartered in New York and will eventually work out of WPP’s offices at 3 World Trade Center. A ‘newfangled’ approach Much of the work that Proto is doing and intends to do for clients is similar to what its founders did at R/GA. Put simply, Wacksman said they’ll focus on three things: developing a new type of business for clients, whether it’s a product, service or other offering; creating the branding for whatever it is they’ve come up with; and lastly, prototyping or piloting it. “Innovation doesn’t happen unless it leads to something new—a new product, a new service, a new business, a new way of working. We’re advising on that,” Wacksman said. “Along the way, often because we are creating new things, it requires the creation of new brands. We’ve built the capability to do that.” What they won’t be doing is creating campaigns to promote said brands. “We’re certainly not going to make ads,” Wacksman said. He described Proto as a mix between management consulting firms, like BCG and McKinsey, and design-led companies such as Ideo and Wolff Olins. He added that Proto intends to fill a “white space” for clients that, in his opinion, isn’t being filled by existing consultancies. His hope is that Proto’s “newfangled” approach will solve for that. “There was definitely room to disrupt an industry that was no longer really serving clients in the right way,” he explained. Because of client confidentiality agreements, Radia and Wacksman didn’t share much regarding specifics of their current work. However, projects that its founders completed at R/GA serve as a sort of blueprint for what they’ll be working on at Proto. For example, while at R/GA, its founders worked with PepsiCo to launch Bubly, helping the company enter the burgeoning sparkling water market. Wacksman said Proto will focus on providing “practical and actionable” things for clients that can be implemented, as opposed to mere ideas that ultimately end up collecting dust. “That’s the big ding on innovation—clients spend a lot of money on it, but nothing ever makes it to market. They end up with decks and things that got killed along the way,” he said.