Three CEOs Are Ending “The Year of Shrinking Budgets” by Helping Clients Outsmart, Not Outspend

As their businesses rocket towards the end of the year, three CEOs believe maintaining focus on the big things that always matter – clients, people, and work – is a feat, especially when faced with a tough economy and shrinking client budgets. 

In 2025, though, the industry will need to evolve – breaking away from homogeneity, building new capabilities and models, and remaining adamant about the commercial value of creativity, according to Laura Aldington, Lee Leggett, and Lee Lowndes, who run creative agencies across Australia and New Zealand.

CHEP Network CEO Lee Leggett starts by acknowledging, “It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it?” 

“We’ve had our hands full in 2024, but as we enter the final straight we’re staying focused on helping our clients to persevere through a challenging economic environment,” she tells LBB.

“The value of partnership with our clients has never been more important - we’ve needed to work more closely, plan – and even replan – together and really look at how we can build efficient and innovative programs between our teams. 

“That has ultimately deepened our relationships and so if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we enter 2025 with a sense of optimism.”

Lee Lowndes, the CEO at Daylight, adds her priority is “fewer, bigger, and better”, precisely because of the economic headwinds. The market has been a “whirlwind”, she says, “with shifting priorities, cautious client spending, and uncertainty.”

“Locally, there are a few promising green shoots,” she continues. “For us, the goal is to refocus on partnerships where clients have ambitions to drive meaningful change and to make sure our teams have the headspace to deliver on that.”

Laura Aldington, who runs indie shop Supermassive with her co-founders and ex-Havas colleagues Simone Gupta and Jon Austin, says the agency’s priorities don’t shift.

“‘Priorities’ is a funny word,” she says. “It can, of course, be used to describe how to get all the things keeping you busy in any given quarter done on time. 

“But in a world where the urgent will often drown out the important, we prefer to think of our priorities as the beliefs that matter, define us, and dictate how we do business. So they don’t really change.”

Laura says those beliefs are simple and enduring. “Ask us tomorrow, next month, next quarter, next year. Great work, great clients, great talent.” Work is great, versus just good, when it helps clients “outsmart, not just outspend.”

“Great clients are simply those who share our ambition and who treat us with respect and we’ve got a roster that 100% do that, without exception,” she says.

The people that make up Supermassive’s team include permanent staff, and a roster of experts who are pulled in on a project basis as part of its hub and spoke model.

“What we’ve learned is that, if they can do great work with great clients, they don’t really care about anything else. Everyone has to take the bins out, the air con doesn’t always work, nobody gets any free fruit. Nobody complains.

"We’ve worked in businesses with countless perks but discovered they are pretty meaningless without great work, and great clients.”

But she adds, “We are fixing the air con though. As a priority.”

CHEP’s leader agrees that supporting the “brilliant people” at her agency is always pressing, but especially when they have “faced their own challenges as humans in this same [economic] environment.”

Daylight’s chief executive, based in New Zealand, is concentrating on keeping the “wheels turning” as the southern hemisphere “effectively shuts down for summer break”, and expanding the agency’s footprint in Australia.

“We've been working closely with a bunch of independent publishers and research partners, delivering design, tech transformation, and communications. So strengthening those relationships with our extended Daylight whānau across the ditch is a key priority.”

All three are on the same page: 2025 needs to be about big ideas that grow brands and drive business results, even as it becomes tougher to get the budget to fund such ideas.

“The biggest challenge – but as ever, the biggest opportunity – is continuing to prove the value of creativity as a driver of business growth,” CHEP’s Lee says. 

“Our industry will and should continue to evolve. We need to build new capabilities, new models, flexibility, and resilience but never forget that creativity is still the most important thing we do. Every day brings new and different challenges but this is still a brilliant industry full of smart, innovative and creative talent who turn briefs into magic every day.”

Lee at Daylight thinks “2024 has definitely been the year of shrinking budgets”, which she thinks has muffled distinctiveness in the New Zealand market.

“Add to that the challenges of automation, and it feels like we've been left with a sea of sameness here in Aotearoa. With shifting media and digital demands, brands and organisations are under immense pressure to deliver fully integrated strategies. But in the end, keeping your services, customer experience, and communications truly distinctive is what's going to set you apart.”

She’s hopeful that “2025 brings a resurgence of brands and organisations fighting to keep ideas and originality alive” because a “hyper-homogenised approach doesn’t feel sustainable.”

Focusing first and foremost on distinctive, original work leads not just to client growth, but agency growth too, Laura argues. At Supermassive, “we treat profit as an outcome rather than an objective.”

“Funnily enough, we’ve learned that nothing makes commercial success more elusive than relentlessly chasing it at the expense of everything else,” she says.

“The reverse is also true, as long as you are relentlessly chasing excellence instead, not just fucking about.”