Catching the Wave: DEPT’s New Global Chief Client and Growth Officer on the Opportunity of This Moment
A few weeks ago, global digital agency DEPT hired Andrew Dimitriou as its global chief client and growth officer. In line with the agency’s approach, he becomes a partner of the company. Tasked with overseeing DEPT’s global growth, marketing, and client service teams, he’s also focusing on delivering pioneering customer experiences, campaigns, and solutions that set standards for the next era of AI transformation.
Having spent most of his 25 plus years in global networks transforming global businesses with experience in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe, Andrew’s got a broad perspective on the industry.
To find out what his aims and priorities are in his new job, LBB’s Alex Reeves caught up with Andrew.
LBB> You’ve had a long career at WPP, mostly in what was Y&R. Can you talk us through the twists and turns up to this point of joining DEPT?
Andrew> Except for a small stint in Australia when I was at Carr Clark Rapp Collins, I've mostly been with Y&R and part of the Y&R Group. I guess I'm dating myself, but I've done stints at Landor and at Wonderman when they were part of Y&R Group, and even a stint at MediaEdge. Then I worked at VML in Kansas City as well, before it was the VML that it looks like today.
I've been quite fortunate in that my experience has taken me, roughly every three years, to either a new sort of discipline company and/or a different location. So when I started off in New York, I was doing the management trainee program, which meant every six to nine months you had to go to a different company and learn what that company did. And then that's when I got to know Wunderman, BAB Consulting, MediaEdge, and Y&R.
I liked Y&R. I came back and did business development for North America, way back in the early '00s. They were pretty good at mapping out careers back then, so every three years you were kind of tapped on the shoulder and told you're ready for the next challenge. So then I started what is still to this day my passion - managing global accounts. I used to run accounts like Sony and Xerox.
After I did that for another three plus years, I got the tap and was asked if I'd like to move to Latin America and manage all the global clients there. So I did that for a while, and learned my bad version of Spanish along the way. It was great living in Mexico and in Sao Paulo for a bit, learning new cultures. Being in a culture is very different from learning about a culture. It was fantastic. I got to know some different ways of working, how people do different businesses in different cultures, and other things like that. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Latin America, particularly my time in Sao Paulo. It was a time when Brazil was almost at parity with the US - the real was as strong as the dollar. Anything that you could dream of, you could do - a 'go get you' kind of thing.
I came back to New York for a while and did a corporate job, I would say. I didn't really like that, to be honest, because I like clients and being close to the work. And then went out to Kansas City where I set up a WPP unit with VML to run one of our largest clients, Colgate Palmolive. We set up a bespoke agency, And opened offices in Kansas City, Prague, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Sao Paulo and Sydney within three years. It was amazing. We started with literally three boxes and a chair, and then, when all was said and done, there were 800 people working for us. So it's like drinking from a firehose. One day you're onboarding, the next day you're pitching. When we were building that, they said, ‘Andrew, why don't you go over for three years and fix the Paris office?’. It needed some tender love and care. So I said sure, why not? It sounded like a good adventure.
Initially the plan was to come back, but then coming full circle they asked me to run Y&R in continental Europe from France. Then when VMLY&R happened, I was running the region anyway, so I didn't move up until eight months ago, when I actually did finally move to London. So I spent a good 10 years in Paris, which also means I also speak French badly.
So, every three years it's been like starting a different company. While on a piece of paper without the context, it looks like I was at Y&R for 25 years, actually, the company every three years either evolved, or I changed locations and roles. It's been completely different, and now obviously coming to DEPT I've brought all of that with me to a brand new world of possibility, which is also exciting.
LBB> How different does DEPT feel to all of those years in WPP?
Andrew> I'd love to say, ‘Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore’. But all kidding aside, I think what I actually can sense is the energy and the culture. The tenacity to get things done is second to none. It's never a 'no, because', it's always a 'yes, and' sort of thing. You live in the land of possibilities. So when you combine it with the new, future-facing capabilities that DEPT has in technology and marketing, you're like a kid in a candy store. Great! I'm going to go to these clients, and we can solve their problems in new and interesting ways that we couldn't have imagined before. That's what's exciting - the level of speed, and the capabilities that are really at the forefront of the industry, in my opinion.
Obviously I too am a partner, but the fact that the company is partner led - there's a bunch of us that actually own the company - is something I really appreciate. That means when you are a client, you're most likely dealing with a person that owns a stake in the company. So you get past the decision maker, but you actually get accountability, because a buck stops somewhere. This partner-led model is something that really attracted me - it's completely different. There's nothing to say about one or the other. I think they were both great experiences on one side, but this a totally different experience, which I'm super excited about.
LBB> As you say, you like to be close to the work. Is there any recent DEPT work that you think is exactly the sort of thing you want to do more of?
Andrew> The thing with DEPT is some of the work that we do for some of the clients… we can't actually talk about because of how business-integral it is to their success. However, there’s a couple of things that I would highlight.
I think some of the work that we're doing for the likes of Google and the G Store, launching new products and the new UX, UI - when you look at it, it's absolutely amazing. From the outside, you see world-class activities. I quite like the Just Eat work here, and this is what I love about the company, as it's all very varied. In my previous role, you'd make some big, anthemic film or something. But here on one day, you'll be talking about eBay, which is personalisation at scale across markets, across verticals, in the fashion industry or the automotive industry, and that runs these superb CRM programmes, which, in my mind, is super creative.
In the brand and media space, I think we also do some very creative work, particularly in branded content, and personalisation at scale. When you look at the digital design and digital products, or what we call product and experience, I think some of the user interfaces that we're doing for some of our clients and the app design work is fantastic. This even extends to some of the health apps that we're doing. We're creating something that helps people that are going through depression, in order to combat suicidal thoughts. So how do we identify the cues from their online behaviour and reach out proactively? These are the things that we must consider in advance within the digital ecosystem.
Then we have a whole systems and data team. And particularly on the data team, some of the work that we're doing for the big tech companies, which is the part that we can't talk about. All I can say is it's more advanced than anything that I've seen - it's actually core to the client’s go to markets. That's why we can't talk about it.. And then everything that this company does, even the way we use our internal systems - there's AI embedded into all of it. I just looked at a client dashboard and we had some numbers which an AI robot is crunching and making suggestions from. It’s saying stuff like, 'Hey, here's your report. You may want to look at these things'. In the past, you'd have a meeting with three people to look at all this. But now it comes to your inbox and it’s already done. That's the type of company this is. It's amazing,
LBB> You’ve got a growth-focused role. What do you think are the biggest growth opportunities for DEPT?
Andrew> I think it's the beauty of our capability. Because we do so many different things in the digital end-to-end experience space, for us, the simplest way we look at our business (and this is true everywhere around the world) is the 50-50, as we call it (50% technology and 50% marketing). And we like that split between the two. I think our secret sauce is going to lie here in the future, connecting end-to-end experiences, because of our understanding of how digital works and how we can help consumers and/or customers in the B2B space as they migrate along that consumer journey. I think being able to connect more of those dots will help our clients grow, and therefore let DEPT grow. So that's what I'm most excited about.
LBB> It's a dual role that's growth and client services, so what are your priorities on the client service side?
Andrew> I grew up in the client world, so I have a slight bias. I think clients have got to be the tip of the spear and really be that strategic sparring partner. We need to make sure that we establish what our vision is for client service and how we're going to deliver value every day to our clients. That's going to be expressed through our client team. They have a brilliant canvas, as I've just talked about, of capability to kind of bring to the clients, but at that tip, if you will, it's always going to be the client partner. So my job is just to make that as excellent as it can be and to really drive that forward. So that's sort of simple. And then, of course, I’m also going to really meet with clients and help unlock some growth pathways for them, as you would normally expect.
LBB> Fifty percent of DEPT revenue is AI-enabled in some way – what do you see as the role of AI for DEPT, in transforming what its clients can achieve?
Andrew> You have to think about a continuum of things. If you go back seven years or so, we started on this digital transformation journey where clients and agencies started to get tech stacks and to digitise their area of their business. Covid-19 accelerated that, and now pretty much every client has a tech stack of some sort and things like that.
The view that we have is AI is the accelerator to take that to the next level. So it's not necessarily about giving you more equipment and systems, but it's how we take that, use our knowledge, and apply it to accelerate growth or solving a business problem. That's where we see the next evolution. It's not digital transformation, it's actually AI transformation. Some companies are going to be left behind, and there'll be companies that win. And you know what? Speed is going to be really important in winning the race to arms.
LBB> It definitely feels like you’re primed to be able to capitalise on that right now.
Andrew> Sometimes you've got to read the tea leaves. Being a surfer, you've got to catch the wave at the right moment, you know?
LBB> Ah you’re a surfer?
Andrew> Well, I used to be. I mean, it's hard to surf in London. I haven't been to the wave machine on the Thames yet. I'm not sure I'm game to dodge the things that are in the Thames.
LBB> What else are you particularly excited about?
Andrew> Peter Drucker said culture eats strategy for breakfast. And it's nice to read about it in a management book. I don't know if it's by design, but the culture is so strong, energetic and entrepreneurial here. The pace and the rapidness of it is just magnetic. You can't help but have energy in it. It's exciting. The people around me are so excited - it's almost infectious. It is something that feels unique to me. And everybody's obsessed about thinking of the next.
