Caution Is One of 2025’s Biggest Creative Barriers: VML CCO Tom Murphy

Following a year of ‘complicated’ organisational shifting after the merger of VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson, VML’s North American chief creative officer, Tom Murphy, tells LBB he is looking forward to creating more courageous ideas for brave clients in 2025 and beyond.

Having led creative at some of the world’s biggest agencies, including DDB, McCann and his current employer, Tom has never lost his art director instincts and passion for “sweating the way things look and feel”. And now, the industry abuzz with questions around AI, developing young talent and the evolving media-creative dynamic, the CCO has some exciting challenges to solve for the network that he says has found a rhythm in its newest form.

LBB’s Ben Conway caught up with Tom to discuss all of this, celebrate some recent work, and reveal his plans for VML across North America.

LBB> Hi Tom! Can we get a temperature check on the agency in 2025?

Tom> We're feeling a lot of positive energy and momentum right now. Last year at VML was a year where there was a lot of post-merger work to be done, and a degree of complication. It was a year of taking care of all that stuff, and this year is the year of looking forward and really thinking about the work.

There is a larger sense, in the world of advertising, that there's quite a bit of uncertainty. The industry is trying to figure out what it is. But our attitude is, let's put our heads down and focus on creating amazing ideas that make an impact. That's our primary concern.

LBB> You mention ‘complication’ with regard to the merger. What were some of the biggest challenges with that process?

Tom> For the creative people, it was philosophically not hard at all, because you had a creative community at VMLY&R, and at Wunderman Thompson. Culturally, it felt like a pretty good fit from the beginning. I didn't feel a lot of tension between the two sides coming together. But just organisationally and structurally, there was a lot of complication. The org chart suddenly became very complex, so how do you get it back to being simple again?

LBB> Have there been any recent projects that gave you reason for optimism, creatively?

Tom> One that was very close to me, which I was quite involved with personally, was the Hellman's initiative around the Super Bowl. We created quite a big splash with an idea called ‘When Sally met Hellman's’, where we took that famous Katz's Deli scene in ‘When Harry Met Sally’ and re-imagined it with a twist. That was really fun to be a part of.

We were hoping for a big cultural impact, and we got it. In so many ways, that’s why we all get into advertising – to do things that are felt in the culture. So that was really affirming to me, and a really, really cool thing to be a part of.

LBB> The industry feels more focused than ever on ‘tapping into culture’ like that, and there are so many different, new ways to do it… What does VML’s split look like, between working with social elements, influencer marketing and other new-gen marketing funnels?

Tom> Our whole philosophy at VML is about connected brands – the idea that human beings don't encounter brands in these isolated channels; they encounter them much more holistically. So our agency is structured in three pillars: brand experience, customer experience and commerce.

Every agency likes to believe they're well-rounded, but we really are. We do things that range from a big, ‘traditional’ Super Bowl spot with a big, traditional media buy – even though there was a heavy social component to the Hellman’s work – to things that are much more social-first.

Wendy’s is our best-in-class example of social leading the brand. There was a thing done by our Wendy's team this year called ‘The Frosty Fix’. It’s in that glorious tradition of Wendy's being a challenger brand and poking fun at McDonald's. The team couldn’t help but notice that McDonald's takes a lot of flack for their broken shake and ice cream machines. So Wendy's, as the purveyor of Frosties, poked at that and trolled McDonald's, bringing Frosties to the people.

That was an initiative that was entirely socially driven. It's one of my favourite pieces of work out of the agency this year. I love it. Social channels are where the people are, so that's how we've got to bring creativity to the world.

LBB> Another hot topic right now is the closening between creative and media – departments that were historically closer pre-2000s. How are your creative-media relationships looking at VML?

Tom> The two sides are coming back together much more, and I’m not surprised that you're seeing that as a pattern. Certainly in the way we pitch things, we're like that on a lot of our brands. That is how we function. I work heavily on Mazda and that is how it has to work on that account.

[VML New York CCO] Rosie Bardales recently did a piece of work for [frozen meals brand] Stouffer that I love, called ‘What's for Dinner?’. It's very much a media idea, although it originated with our creative team. People in the States tend to not pre-plan their week of groceries, so every day at four o’clock they’re faced with ‘what the F are we going to make for dinner?’. So they road blocked media at the 4pm to 5pm moment, confronting the world with this ominous question.

Of course, Stouffer was the payoff, and I'm making it sound very rational, but the execution was kind of weird in a beautiful way. That’s just an example of a completely intertwined creative-media idea.

LBB> After a lot of experience doing just that, do you still find yourself surprised and invigorated by the industry?

Tom> Maybe you hear it more now, but every year there's this feeling of, ‘oh my god, is anyone doing good work anymore?’ or, ‘we're not making the kind of work we used to’... And then I look at what won at Cannes, and I'm always blown away and made insanely jealous by the best work there.

I was reading about ‘Saturday Night Live’ recently… Since that show has been around, its demise has been predicted. Everybody's constantly saying, ‘Well, this cast isn't as good as the cast from five years ago or 10 years ago or 15 years ago’, and yet the show always manages to surprise people and stay culturally relevant. Our industry is kind of like that too, where we're constantly talking about whether it’s grown stagnant, or if we’re doing the kinds of ideas that we want to do. But I find that we always kind of do!

LBB> You started out on the art directing side of things – do you still feel like an art director? How often do you get to stretch those muscles as CCO?

Tom> It’s interesting, one thing I'm proud of at VML is that we have a lot of art directors in very senior, C-level positions. It starts with Debbi Vandeven, our global CCO, who was an art director. [VML New York CCOs] Wayne [Best] and Rosie [Bardales] both came up that way. So many people! Jaime Mandelbaum, our EMEA CCO, is as well. I kind of love that!

You teach yourself to write as well, if you're going to rise up through the ranks, and I've grown to really enjoy writing over the years. But I still feel like an art director. I have quite a close relationship with our designers. I love sweating the way things look and feel. I don't think that ever goes away.

I will say, I'm blown away by the way some of our younger creatives are using AI to make things look beautiful. I must admit, I feel a little like I haven't quite mastered some of those hands-on skills, but I like to think that I'm decent at directing it.

LBB> That’s interesting! Leadership and mentorship is often viewed from a top-down perspective. But are skills also being brought up through the agency by the younger generations?

Tom> Constantly! I remember pitching an idea to clients once called ‘Reverse Mentorships’. Typically, you think of internships or mentorship programmes as always being top-down, but in so many ways, particularly in our industry, you learn from being around younger creatives. I do, constantly.

Personally, it also helps having two teenage children who keep me quite attuned pop-culturally. They would groan [at that] because they find me horribly embarrassing, but it is fun to stay attuned to what's happening through them.

But design-wise as well – one of the invigorating things about our industry is that aesthetics always change. What looks good and feels good in design is constantly changing. I love observing that and being connected to it through our designers.

LBB> With young talent joining the agency, what do you feel they need more of now, than perhaps five or ten years ago?

Tom> It’s sometimes harder for them to get as much hands-on production and client experience as a lot of people in my generation did – just because of the way things are structured. Back then, you were really thrown in at a young age, into huge productions and client relationships.

Some of this has to do with the complexity of the asks from our clients. Because of fragmented media, the stories that you're having to tell and the way you're having to present those ideas has gotten harder to stitch together. So you end up relying really heavily on senior people to oversee things. Sometimes what's lost is young people getting thrown in as early as they used to be.

I like to think we try to keep that spirit alive here, but it's not easy. Sometimes, because you're moving so fast and because of the complexity, it is easier to give things to very senior people.

^{Above: Downtown Alliance work created by VML creative duo, Jack Lyon and Sydney Richter}

But on the other hand, we have amazing young teams. I’m thinking of one in particular, [senior copywriter and art director duo] Jack Lyon and Sydney Richter, who started their first day in advertising at Wunderman Thompson the day I joined over two years ago. It's incredible seeing how quickly they have been able to contribute in big ways.

So I still see lots of reason to have hope, but it has gotten a little harder. Even on a lot of big brands, there is less steady production than there used to be. With the old TV-centric model, particularly if you worked on big brands, you were just constantly making work, which made for great training opportunities for young people.

LBB> I suppose the question then, is how do we fix that?

Tom> We ask our creative directors to give those types of opportunities to the younger creatives, and we push ourselves to look out for them. But it's an interesting question. As an industry, we have to ask ourselves, ‘how are we making sure that the next generation is getting what we did in terms of training?’.

LBB> We saw the conversation around a need for humour at Cannes last year, and the conversation around AI is in full flow at Cannes this year. What do you see as the big creative challenges for 2025 and beyond?

Tom> On the AI thing, I have personally made a shift. As a senior creative person, you're obviously supposed to say that you're thrilled by the creative possibilities of AI. But I think people would be lying if they expressed that they didn't have any nervousness about it. A lot of what AI can be trained to do very well is [also] what creative people do well.

Having said that, I have personally crossed a little bit of a threshold, in part because I'm seeing it used very creatively so often. I just did a pitch and the work looks absolutely gorgeous. It was hard to tell where AI stopped and where manual design began.

Just like anything else, I feel like it's a tool, and we're hitting a tipping point where suddenly creatives are just starting to use it really, really well. It's unlocking possibilities more than it's limiting people. You've caught me at a moment where I feel quite enthused about AI, as a creative tool in our industry.

In terms of creative barriers, I think that there is more caution right now from clients. There was a huge culture eight to ten years ago of brands taking very vocal stances about issues that they believed in. Right now, you're seeing much more caution from brands in America. I’ve had debates with people about whether that's the case a little more in America than other parts of the world, and it possibly is. But you're seeing hesitancy to plant flags and make statements and take strong points of view. That is a barrier.

Another obvious one is the lack of a kind of monoculture. That makes it harder to touch people's imaginations sometimes. Everybody loves the Super Bowl and the Oscars, because they're moments when everybody is tuned into the same conversation.

LBB> What are your ambitions for the rest of 2025 and beyond?

Tom> Continuing to create ideas that strike chords. We talk a lot about how great ideas have to have heart, brains and courage, which is a subtle nod to ‘The Wizard of Oz’; VML rose out of Kansas City! But the story of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is that you need all three of those things to be a human in the world, and that's true of a lot of our best ideas.

The hardest of those three qualities is probably the courage part. Continuing to look for and sell brave ideas would be what excites me most. But it’s also very challenging. Some of our best ideas as a network, like‘Thanks for Coke-Creating’ last year, are about pushing clients to be brave. Pushing ourselves to be brave is what gets me excited, and certainly what I hope to do more of.