Rebel with a Cause

A belligerent optimist bringing change to the world of advertising.

In this era of constant transformative change, it pays to be a bit of a maverick. Or, as Saatchi & Saatchi chief executive Nicky Bell would have it, an optimist with a good cause. 
The 41-year-old head of the New Zealand branch of the iconic international advertising agency subscribes to the view that we have entered an ‘age of creativity’ in which the ability to dream up and realise unorthodox solutions, in all areas, not just advertising, is supremely important.
“It’s no coincidence that the most successful companies are those with cultures that nurture creativity,” she says. “Businesses compete like crazy to gain the smallest advantage but it’s only a matter of time before someone else copies it. The ultimate – and only sustainable – competitive advantage is the ability to think creatively.
A team having the confidence to express ideas, which others might initially consider outrageous is, she believes, the key to success.
“It does take real courage to voice alternative views, but it’s essential that we do. That needs to be better respected and supported. I do my best to be a creative leader, to inspire and empower our people and champion their strongest ideas.”
Meeting Nicky at Saatchi’s funky Auckland offices, the entrance at which two metallic gargoyles stand guard, it’s clear she doesn’t fit the mould of your average chief executive. For starters, she’s youthful and female. Dressed in an elegant black dress and perfectly groomed, she’s warm, welcoming and upbeat – an outward sign, no doubt, of what she describes as her ‘belligerent optimism’.
Nicky has never made a secret of the fact she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to re-conjure the ‘magic’ that made the agency such a creative powerhouse throughout the 90s and early 2000s. Although Saatchi has always been a dominant force in the domestic ad industry, it was drifting when Nicky first moved into the plush chief executive suite in February 2010, having lost several key clients and significant revenue.
Deciding a restructure was essential, she set out to break down divisions between departments and nurture a collaborative culture more conducive to generating creative solutions for clients. These included integrating digital advertising arm, Saatchi & Saatchi DGS, into the core agency to ensure, she says, that all staff thrive in the digital world. The changes resulted in several redundancies. Unsurprisingly, Nicky copped a lot of criticism but she remains resolute that she did the right thing.
“When I arrived, there was real pressure for change. Consumers no longer differentiate between online and offline channels so neither should agencies. We have evolved our structure and our team to be in a stronger position to deliver irresistible ideas for our clients’ brands. It’s about bringing back the culture of innovation and that famous Saatchi spirit. We’re a stronger, healthier and fitter team than we have been in years and that’s something I’m very proud of.”
While she is clearly capable of making tough calls for what she believes to be the greater good of the agency, she comes across as genuinely enthusiastic about helping staff succeed.
“I don’t think it’s my job to just ‘manage’ people, it’s to help them grow and fulfil their potential. No one has all the answers in isolation. We’re all on the same journey in this agency and we’re all fuelled by a belief in the unreasonable power of creativity when it’s applied to business problems.”
It isn’t hard to see why Saatchi worldwide chief executive Kevin Roberts chose Nicky to lead the New Zealand branch of the proudly avant-garde agency, which he described to her as ‘the jewel in the Saatchi crown’. In her more than two decades in adland, she has worked for two of the world’s most-lauded agencies, managing accounts for an impressively long list of world-renowned businesses and brands.
New Zealand born, Nicky says she was lucky enough to enjoy a ‘classic Kiwi childhood’ spent on her extended family’s sheep and dairy farms and at a bach in Taupo Bay. Her family moved to Sydney, Australia when she was 10 and she lived there for 20 years before Ogilvy & Mather, the agency she worked for at the time, transferred her to its worldwide headquarters in New York.
Surprisingly, for such a spirited campaigner for creativity, she was something of a science geek at school. Inspired by her nurse mother, she had her heart set on becoming a doctor. But by the time she’d finished high school, she’d decided communications and media were more her thing and pursued a career in public relations. But when adland friends introduced her to their world, she was hooked.
“I just loved everything about it,” she enthuses. “The unorthodoxy and unpredictability thrilled me. And I loved that everyone seemed so united in their pursuit of big ideas.”
Starting her ad career as an account manager (aka ‘suit’) at Ogilvy & Mather Sydney in 1990, Nicky worked on campaigns for the Australian government and high-profile organisations and brands such as American Express, Unilever’s Bushells, Lipton Tea, Dove and the WorldWide Fund for Nature.
The agency transferred her to New York in 1999 to manage the account for body-care giant Dove. Pitched as a two-year posting, Nicky ended up spending 11 years in the city she initially found daunting and thrilling in relatively equal measures.
“At first, I worried that the skills I’d acquired in Australia wouldn’t translate. I didn’t know how New Yorkers worked. My husband Cameron [an Australian advertising creative director] and I decided all we could do was be ourselves. Thankfully, that worked well enough for us to stay for as long as we did.”
But Nicky didn’t just survive, she thrived, managing accounts across North and South America, Asia and Europe. She did such a stellar job, she was made ‘worldwide managing director’ of the Avon, Kodak and Motorola accounts and became the youngest person ever to be appointed to the Ogilvy NY management board.
Nicky believes her quintessentially Antipodean inclination to stand up for what she believes in gave her an edge in the famously competitive city.
“I have become quite fearless about ‘doing the right thing’. I think that’s a really cultural thing. We [Kiwis and Australians] don’t let politics or hierarchy stop us from speaking up when we know we should.”
But as big a buzz as she derived from working on challenging and high profile accounts, she sometimes felt constrained by the strict hierarchies and bureaucracy endemic in the American business environment.
“There are so many people vying for position and such large sums of money at stake that a lot of clients are very risk averse. Long discussions often end in you going away and doing more research rather than just getting on with the job. Unfortunately some [clients] have cultures that reward inaction over action.”

Still, she and Cameron made the most of life in the city that never sleeps, indulging in an eclectic selection of intellectual, creative, cultural and purely hedonistic pursuits. The couple also travelled extensively throughout the US, South America and beyond. They thought nothing of jetting out to Europe for the weekend – simply because they could.
“New Yorkers thought we were crazy but they didn’t realise it would have taken us 24 hours to get there from Australia. Six to seven hours didn’t seem that bad!”
The couple’s twin daughters were born in 2006 and, when they turned two, Nicky decided to take a break from advertising to look after them fulltime. Nearing the end of this period, she began researching job opportunities in the US and, when nothing commanded her attention, she and Cameron began contemplating a return to Australasia.
When the job came up at Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, she wasted no time in applying, saying it felt right for many reasons, both personal and professional.
“When I found out I got it and would be returning to New Zealand, I felt like I’d come full circle,” she reflects. “Everything pointed to the fact it was the right next move.”
Her predecessor Andrew Stone had enjoyed considerable success in his five-years tenure, helping Saatchi take out the Fairfax AdMedia Agency of the Year award in 2006 and nabbing the CEO of the Year gong four times (in 2002, 2005, 2006 and 2007). Somewhere along the way, however, the agency lost momentum and clients jumped ship. By the time of Stone’s departure at the end of 2009, most industry commentators agreed it was time for a change.
Many, however, were sceptical that Nicky, who had never worked in New Zealand, was the right choice.
Confident she could and would prove them wrong, Nicky drew upon her extraordinary powers of energy, enthusiasm and optimism to inspire her team to create an agency better adapted to our digital, socially networked world. New media, she says, has revolutionised the industry over the past few years and will certainly continue to present a complex array of business and creative challenges.
“When I started out, we pushed messages to a broad audience and hoped people were interested or charmed enough to take notice. Now, technology enables people to engage with and influence brands in the most intimate of ways. Digital and social media are where most people’s conversations are taking place today, with or without our clients’ involvement. That’s a radical and incredibly exciting shift.”
Although this interactive environment can be dangerously difficult to navigate (BP’s online shaming over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 is a prime example), Nicky emphasises that it opens up invaluable opportunities to foster close relationships with clients and customers built upon ongoing honest communication.
The agency’s role, she says, is to harness its capacity for “rigorous and creative thinking” to enable clients to make the most of these opportunities. 
“Good advertising people are imaginative and passionate problem solvers who really understand their clients’ businesses, needs and goals. Thanks to the changes we’ve made over the past year, we now have stronger, more collaborative partnerships with clients.
“Many now talk to me about the insights we bring to their business before we even start making ads. Having people skilled at finding true business and brand differentiators and insights is extremely important and a real competitive advantage.”
Despite these seismic changes in the industry, Nicky says its secret weapon remains the same (although, these days, it’s a much-upgraded model).
“Fundamentally, it has been – and always will be – about harnessing the power of creative thought to solve complex business problems. The most talented advertising people, in my experience, have an insatiable curiosity about the world, are passionate about what they do and have great humility. Arrogance does not breed success.”
Her theories of creativity will certainly be put to the test as she and the rest of the team guide the agency toward its next ‘incarnation’. A key collaborator going forward will be executive director Antonio Navas, who started in May. The pair worked together at Ogilvy Mather New York and share many of the same philosophies about creativity in business. 
Both Nicky and Venezuelan-born Antonio are full of praise for the New Zealand advertising industry, extolling its capacity for generating wonderfully inventive ideas that work extremely well.
Nicky is also relishing the courage of many clients, to allow the agency to take great ideas and run with them.
“There’s definitely more of a ‘just do it’ mentality,” she muses. “Post-financial crisis, especially, I think Kiwis know they have greater scope than people in many other parts of the world to experiment. But we’re also an outward-looking culture; we draw inspiration from overseas and care about what the rest of the world thinks.”
Enthusiastic about helping the industry as a whole to evolve, Nicky is an active member of the Communications Agencies Association of NZ (CAANZ) executive board. As she sees it, the industry could be doing a lot more to attract and retain talent and ‘inspire and nurture’ rising stars.
In a neat twist of fate, Nicky is on the board of the South Auckland Health Foundation, meaning she’s finally able to satisfy her childhood desire to contribute to the health sector.
She says her family are settling well into life in Auckland and will stay “for as long as we’re happy and making good things happen”. Cameron is currently caring for the girls fulltime and even told Nicky he prefers life here to Australia (although she admits he mightn’t be willing to admit this in public!).
While she says she has always thought of New Zealand as home, it doesn’t claim exclusive title.
“As time goes by, you extend your sense of belonging to include other places that are formative to you. So while I’m absolutely a Kiwi, Australia and New York also hold a special place in my heart. I’m a bit of a composite.”
Wherever Nicky ends up, you sense it will be exactly where she wants to be – and that the path she takes to get there will be full of fun, adventure and a fair few crazy twists and turns. Her beliefs about optimism sum it up well.
“Being positive doesn’t equate to being guileless,” she stresses. “It’s about considering all possible options (and perhaps a few impossible ones) and choosing the best. If it doesn’t work out, use your imagination. There is always another way.”
Lorna Thornber
www.saatchi.com