5 Minutes with… Sid McGrath
Bringing together his passion for people and brands, Wunderman Thompson’s Sid McGrath helps transform the way brands are experienced across multiple touchpoints. The result is culturally relevant and highly effective work for the likes of HSBC, BT, Microsoft, Duracell, Macallan and Nestlé.
Previous to joining Wunderman Thompson in 2020, Sid spent years across some of the industry’s leading agencies before helping found Karmarama in 2006, building it from a small independent to an integrated creative business, part of Accenture Interactive. He led teams to produce award-winning work for the likes of The Army, Honda and Confused.com and helped the agency win The Sunday Times Best Company to Work For, for five years running.
In this interview with LBB, Sid charts the happy accident that got him into advertising, reveals his special creative sauce and shares the lessons that continue to guide his work today.
LBB> You have held a long and impressive career in planning and strategy. But how did you find yourself on this path? Was it something you always knew you wanted to do or was it more of a happy accident?
Sid> Definitely a happy accident. I’d always admired the art of communication – from the way that cinema posters could somehow distil two hours’ worth of story to one image and a few words, or an album cover could conjure up the mood of the music with a single picture – but I didn’t know what to do with it. I started working in marketing at Procter & Gamble with no clue what I was doing, but I knew it was the university of business. It was amazing training in how to run your own enterprise, but I found the formality and bureaucracy stifling. Then a good friend moved from research into this thing called ‘planning’ and loved it. He said it was all the good things about the job I was doing – thinking about people and using creativity – and none of the bad – dealing with sales, the factory, board reports etc. So, after interviewing at 18 different agencies, I was finally given my chance by Merry Baskin at JWT, the university of advertising.
LBB> You joined Wunderman Thompson from Karmarama, where you spent 14 years transforming the agency from a small independent to an integrated creative business. What are some of the biggest lessons you learned during your time there that you have carried forward?
Sid> Two things. First, culture is so important. Karmarama, at its heart, was an experiment – could the good guys finish first for a change? We tried to create the warmest yet most characterful workplace possible, where people could express themselves, produce the best work of their careers and have a lot of fun. And it seemed to work. Hopefully we’re creating the same thing here. Second, I hope, is a sense of fearlessness. We must never forget that the client pays us to use creativity to do things they can’t do themselves. If what we do could be created by them, a focus group, or ChatGPT then we’ve let ourselves down. Plus, deep down, the public doesn’t really want to be interrupted by our annoying commercial messages, so it’s essential that what we do feels exciting, surprising, challenging – anything that means our creativity has been worthwhile and money well spent.
LBB> During that time you won over 30 new business accounts including Lidl, BT Plusnet and the BBC. What is it about your approach, experience and mindset that you believe leads to such successes as this?
Sid> We used to think of brands either as ‘challengers’ or ‘challenged’ and with both, set about dismantling all the barriers to their possible success. For challenger brands it was how to make them matter, give them a sense of purpose and confidence so they could outshine the competition. For challenged brands it was about helping people see their merit, fall back in love with them and make them irreplaceable. Plus, a lot of confidence on our part that our ideas would work, they would change minds and they would be something the client could feel proud about. It was that sense of fearlessness once again.
LBB> Your pivotal role in building a business that stitches creative, data and technology together was a key factor to your appointment at Wunderman Thompson. What excites you most about your role as UK chief strategy officer and what is your ambition for the company?
Sid> There’s so much ambition here, it’s just such an exciting place to be. We’re committed to creating the most modern, forward-facing agency in the industry, where clients can get the very best of what they need to succeed. We can do that because we’re a different sort of integrated agency that offers astonishing breadth and depth of pretty much everything. We combine all these skills to create something we call Whole Brand Thinking, where we help organise brands to be more purposeful, distinct and consistent. Once we’ve done this, we set about to get these brands talked about – that’s our special creative sauce – because we believe the more people talk about our work and our brands, the more successful they will be, and we will be too.
LBB> Tell us about some of your personal favourite projects you have worked on in your career so far.
Sid> I’m proud to have played a part in what Channel 4 voted the scariest ad ever, The Judderman for Metz. A fearless client, a great creative team, a bold and somewhat risky strategy, but a memorable result. I loved my time working with Lidl, helping to breathe life into ‘Big on Quality, Lidl on Price’, going to war against the traditional grocers and growing that business exponentially. And I feel honoured to have worked on first direct for a second time, creating an incredibly important campaign that calls out generational injustice. It’s doing work like this that makes what we do in this industry worthwhile
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LBB> What would you say brands need to look out for most when it comes to their strategy over the next year?
Sid> I’ve always believed in the importance of consequence – what happens after our actions. This could be how a competitor reacts when you steal share off them, or what a person does when you’ve challenged their view of a brand or the life they lead. But there’s now a much, much bigger consequence looming and one that we’re all complicit in – the rapid and seeming unstoppable destruction of our planet. Of all the challenges I’ve ever encountered in business or communication, this is the one with the greatest inevitability, with the potential to impact on every single business and every single relationship. Yet too many brands are blind to it, pay lip service to it, or dodge their responsibilities due to profit concerns. But, put simply, without a planet there are no people and with no people there is no profit. We desperately need a sense of urgency now, to collectively do the right thing, to find ways to curb oversupply and overconsumption. This is the biggest challenge for all brands, and unless they embrace the consequences of their action, I think many of them will be screwed as newer, more conscientious competitors do the right thing.
LBB> What are you personally most excited to achieve in the next year?
Sid> After attempting to save the world? My next ambition is to make Wunderman Thompson the new home of modern planning. We have such a rich heritage here and it’s terrifying to think that I’m in some way linked to the godfather of planning, Stephen King. I’m blessed with having some of the smartest, most curious, disruptive thinkers here and I want them to see this as the place where they can think and do extraordinary things.
LBB> Outside of work, what is inspiring you?
Sid> Going right back to the beginning, I just love the epic storytelling of film. And the joy of multiple streaming services, while costly, give me incredible creativity on tap. I just wish I had the time to watch it all!
