5 Minutes with… Matt Kingston
From an analyst at Deloitte to chief strategy officer at FCB Aotearoa, Matt Kingston's career journey has been marked by insightful transitions and significant learnings.
Speaking to LBB’s Tom Loudon, Matt reflects on the pivotal moments that led him from the world of finance to advertising. His consulting experience with renowned brands shaped his strategic perspective and ultimately drew him back to agency life with a renewed vigour for the industry.
With over 20 years of industry experience, Matt delves into memorable projects and the evolving strategy landscape in the advertising world. He outlines his vision for contributing to FCB Aotearoa's legacy and offers valuable advice for professionals navigating career shifts between consulting and agencies.
LBB> Your career journey has taken you through various reputable agencies and consultancies in Australia and New Zealand. Could you share a pivotal moment that inspired your transition from being an analyst at Deloitte to your current role as chief strategy officer at FCB Aotearoa?
Matt> Honestly, it didn’t take too long for me to realise that life in a big accounting and consulting firm wasn’t my destiny. I certainly hold no grudges; it just didn’t stimulate my imagination, which I learned was really important to me.
I spent the early part of my advertising career playing down my finance experience - as if mere association with that industry would somehow diminish my credibility in a more creative world. But over time, I’ve grown to really embrace those formative years. It gave me a solid commercial grounding and an interesting inside peek at some great companies.
Looking back at this experience has actually made me realise how many of the big consultancies are - rather ironically - better at a specific type of brand building than most advertising agencies, i.e. building their own brand.
LBB> Your experience includes working with notable brands like Trade Me, Pic’s Peanut Butter, and Adidas during your time as an independent strategy consultant. How did this consulting experience shape your perspective on strategy, and what led you back to the agency world with FCB Aotearoa?
Matt> One thing that immediately struck me as an independent consultant was the way I was seen and engaged with by clients. My separation from any perceived agenda gave me a different kind of position and value in their eyes. As I’ve re-entered agency life, this is something I’ve been really mindful of. If we want to be respected as true strategic partners, we must be ruthlessly driven by problems and opportunities rather than any particular kind of solution.
This is a big reason why I’m at FCB. I’ve always seen FCB as an agency that’s driven to make work that impacts the real world rather than being overly obsessed with what their industry peers think. But the real pull back into agency land was the calibre of the people I’d be working with and the quality and ambition of our clients. I thought I’d done my dash in agencies. Still, having worked on a couple of projects with FCB as an independent consultant, I couldn’t believe the depth and breadth of talent the agency had, from creative talent to data and media smarts to the leadership line-up. In Leisa and Peter (our CCOs), I felt a really natural connection in both values and creative ambition, which is a pretty rare thing.
LBB> With over 20 years of industry experience, you've been part of numerous creative and effectiveness awards. Can you highlight a project or campaign that you're particularly proud of, which showcases the impact of your strategic thinking on the final outcome?
Matt> One example I’m particularly proud of is some work I did for a local life insurance company, Partners Life. They have a wonderful entrepreneurial culture, and they’d enjoyed amazing success in large part through winning over the financial adviser community who sold their product, and they found themselves in an interesting position where they were the (then) second biggest and fastest-growing brand in the category, yet nobody knew about them.
Their ambition for the company (both commercially and a possible future sale of the business, which has since happened) required them to shift from what I defined as a ‘demand fulfilment’ approach to marketing to a ‘demand generation’ one. To keep growing, they had to find new customers, not just convert existing ones, which they already did a great job at.
Their bold aspirations and challenger mindset combined with the speed they wanted to move, gave birth to a hugely distinctive brand platform and really disruptive and provocative communication. Helping an organisation that had never thought about brand or advertising enjoy such success was incredibly rewarding.
LBB> In the press release, it's mentioned that you've been involved in judging at the WARC Effectiveness Awards. Could you elaborate on the key insights you've gained from evaluating strategies on an international scale and how these insights have influenced your own strategic approach?
Matt> Assessing work from around the world is always a fantastic opportunity to learn and benchmark yourself and your agency against the best in the world. But I do worry about our competency as an industry in measuring and clearly communicating the value we create. This is one area where our industry has slipped. Our industry bodies have done a good job of communicating advertising’s value at a macro level. Still, on a day-to-day campaign basis, I sense an unhealthy shift in what we recognise in many of our effectiveness shows.
I worry we’ve become seduced by the wrong things. Sound-bitey, often very qualitative results and vanity metrics, are being valued too highly over the rigour and graft of making a convincing causal case.
Resetting our effectiveness culture is a huge area of focus for us at FCB at the moment, not for the sole purpose of winning awards, obviously. Still, more to hold ourselves to a higher standard and learn from what we put out into the world.
LBB> Your transition from being an independent strategy consultant to becoming the chief strategy officer at FCB Aotearoa signifies a significant career move. What excites you the most about this new role, and how do you envision contributing to the agency's legacy of strategy and effectiveness?
Matt> After operating as a lone ranger for a while, I’m excited about the sheer scale of opportunity at FCB. We’re lucky enough to work with some of Aotearoa’s biggest and most respected companies and government agencies. This gives us a huge platform to create an impact for our clients and the country. Whether that’s as humble as creating ads that make the country laugh or something as serious as lowering the road toll, I find this hugely motivating.
LBB> Throughout your career, you've shaped strategies for a diverse range of clients. Can you share a memorable lesson you've learned about crafting strategies that resonate with audiences across different industries and markets?
Matt> For the most part, the thought process is the same. But generally speaking, creating globally impactful work requires finding and using human truths at their most universal. The difficulty in doing so is avoiding the generic and familiar. The creative risk with global work is that in needing to be so broad in your messaging, it’s very easy to stray into cliché. But there are enough great examples to show us it’s possible
The real joy in local work is trying to uncover the rich and nuanced truths that live in the unique way we (as Kiwis or subcultures) behave or think about things. Conversations rather than search results are the key here. I’m really proud of our work for Waka Kotahi (the New Zealand transport agency) in that it presents such familiar Kiwi-isms in surprising ways, free from easy Kiwi tropes.
LBB> FCB Aotearoa has achieved much recently, including new client wins and creative accolades. How do you plan to harness this momentum to drive innovative and effective strategies that meet both client expectations and the agency's goals?
Matt> When you’re new in a role, there’s often a temptation to change stuff for the sake of it. And while some form of change will be inevitable, I’m trying to be really deliberate with what we do change vs. what we don’t. FCB has been successful for a really long time. I’m spending as much time diagnosing what elements of our culture and offering have been key to that success as I do thinking about what might either need a tune-up or a rethink.
LBB> Lastly, the press release mentions your return to the agency world after working independently. What advice would you give to young professionals aspiring to make similar career shifts, balancing between independent consulting and roles within agencies?
Matt> The big shifts in how we work over the past few years have allowed us all to organise our lives in completely new ways. This is a great thing. And for many creative people, there’s a natural pull towards wanting to work in a freer, more independent way.
As motivating as this is, my first piece of advice for young creative professionals is not to overlook the power of being around other interesting people, which agencies are great for. Being around other creative minds helps our thinking and development in big ways. So by all means, give the independent life a go, but think through what you may be giving up and how you might replace those human interactions to ensure the independent life isn’t a lonely life or an environment you find yourself stalling in.
I’d also encourage people not to consider this a binary choice. There are so many people working in interesting hybrid ways. Think of a structure that works for you and chat with someone about it. When finding and holding on to great talent has never been harder for agencies, you might be surprised at how open people are to your ideas.
