5 Minutes with… Alex Paquin
Aged 28, Alex Paquin took the reins as CEO of his then employer, Nomads Agency. After successfully overseeing global offices in Amsterdam, Dubai, London and Singapore, in 2019 he founded Zerotrillion alongside Hollywood stars Robbie Amell and Italia Ricci.
Fast forward a bit, and Zerotrillion snagged 'Best New Agency' at the New York Festivals in 2021, and now has offices in Amsterdam, New York, and Toronto.
Alex hates corporate jargon and believes clients deserve straighter talk than the industry is offering. In an interview with LBB's Addison Capper, Alex chats about the importance of “leading by effort”, and why he sees the crew at Zerotrillion as akin to an elite SEAL team
LBB> You became a CEO aged 28 - how did you feel stepping into a leadership position like that at a younger age than is perhaps standard? Do you feel that age impacted how you approached your role at all?
Alex> Age definitely impacted how I approached the CEO role. I was managing a lot of people, most of whom were older than me, so I always really felt like I needed to lead by example and, maybe more importantly, lead by effort. I never asked anyone to do anything I wasn’t willing to do myself, and I was always in the trenches with people on pitches and big projects. It brought a lot of energy and cohesion to the team in a way that maybe doesn't exist at other organisations as much, because there’s this ‘us and them’ mentality with management a lot of the time. It was always important to me that our offices and pitch war rooms were a meritocracy. I think people were motivated by the feeling that we were in it together, and we got an edge from the fact that I have no insecurity in having junior staff presenting in pitches if they truly had the best ideas. Even if they weren’t the best presenter - it just feels more genuine.
LBB> How did you end up in the ad industry in the first place? And what was your path that led you to CEO so quickly?
Alex> Despite the fact that my dad was a creative director, I had never planned to be in the ad industry. I studied social sciences and had always wanted to go to law school. While I was in my last year of college in Canada, the global financial crisis was in full swing and there were really no jobs for recent grads. In those days, I was spending most of my time playing online poker with my roommates. That summer I was trolling craigslist (honestly) for jobs, and the ad agency that had the PokerStars account in Toronto hired me as an intern. The rest is history.
LBB> You became a founder - of Zerotrillion - after your experience of being a CEO. What are your thoughts on the differences between being a CEO as an employee and a CEO as an entrepreneur/founder?
Alex> It’s an interesting distinction because usually the people that get promoted to CEO or hired as one are the people who truly treat the business as if it’s their own, even when it isn’t. That’s probably the thing I look for most in future leaders as well: people who just care because they take pride in their work and how they do anything is how they do everything. But that aside, I think the biggest difference is in the freedom to plan for the long view. As an employee CEO, you feel very focused on achieving the short term goals set-out by shareholders and their representatives. Whereas, as a founder CEO, I feel like you’re truly there for the vision and it’s up to you what short term concessions are made in service to that. I find it much more fulfilling. I feel like you can always sense when network agencies don't believe their own hype, they relaunch their website with a squiggly font and use the words ‘epic’ and ‘fearless’ a lot.
Very early on at Zerotrillion, we launched a ventures division and have taken a financial stake in various companies and launched a couple of our own in the retail fashion and restaurant space. We also launched our feature film production company, Zerotrillion Pictures, and are in post production on our debut feature. In my view, these are all germane to our long term vision, but I know they would have been very tough sells to a board as an employee CEO.
LBB> What inspired the launch of Zerotrillion and how would you explain the gap that it fills within the global advertising market?
Alex> Zerotrillion was inspired by my own reluctance to compromise on quality. The name literally means all or nothing. In terms of the global advertising market, there are a lot of ‘aim for the middle’ agencies whose goal is to get the retainer renewed. We’re the agency for the brands that have a mountain to climb, and need someone willing to help them summit, or freeze to death beside them trying. It’s that simple.
In terms of the work that we do, I would say we have a more cohesive integrated offering in the sense that we have strategy, design, creative, PR and media working in one global team, and we often service clients in all of those areas - I think that’s much more true of what brands need these days. We’re more of a SEAL team of elite subject matter experts mixed together to give you the best approach, versus just a creative agency where every problem is a nail.
LBB> How do you see your leadership style? And how does it inform how you manage and scale Zerotrillion?
Alex> My leadership style is really just about unlocking potential in people. Take smart people and throw them into the deep end so they have to choose between quickly shedding (unlearning) the weight of all the one-size-fits-all marketing frameworks and buzzwords they learned at network agencies and thinking for themselves, or sinking.
LBB> You're not at all a fan of corporate jargon - why? And how do you prefer to operate in its absence?
Alex> I think it’s honestly just insulting to clients, and has become a place for incompetence to hide. Just say what you mean. Speak plainly and use words that mean what they mean. Stop saying leveraged.
LBB> In terms of the type of work that you're focusing on for clients and how it's showing up in the world, what are some key focuses for Zerotrillion right now and what is driving them?
Alex> At Zerotrillion, we talk a lot about ‘Creative Maximalism’, which to us, truly means thinking creatively to advance the goals of our clients’ businesses. What it definitely doesn’t mean is blowing money on productions for the sake of the ego of a creative. In my opinion, creativity is as much about the smart ways you think about the production of work as the idea itself. I feel like I see too much work that looks gratuitously expensive and self-indulgent for very little brand payoff.
LBB> An effective leader is always seeking opportunities to learn. What are your favoured ways to soak up wisdom and information?
Alex> I love listening to audiobooks, because you can do it on a plane, or in the car, or wherever, and I find them more ‘efficient’ than podcasts. I still listen to podcasts, but often they’re three-four hours long and there’s a lot of unstructured ideas. To me, the fact that someone can dedicate years of their life to researching, structuring an idea and presenting it to me for use for fifteen dollars is still baffling and I think a hugely undervalued medium.
LBB> Outside of work, what do you do to decompress and what motivates you?
Alex> I love cooking because it’s creative, but contained. You can develop, produce, and ‘distribute’ and enjoy the product in a matter of hours. It can be experimental and just for you. Or it can be a more mainstream hit for friends to enjoy.
