Uncommon Sold Majority Stake to Havas Because It De-Risked US Expansion: Nils Leonard

Nils Leonard and his co-founders sold a 51% stake in Uncommon to Havas two years ago because they were “terrified about how much money we could lose” by expanding into the US market, and realised, “we needed some money.”

The acclaimed creative leader said the decision to hand over equity came with serious stipulations. 

“We said, ‘Look, we don't want to change our name, we want to have our own clients, we want to grow our interests and diversify our outfit, and we don't want anyone to fuck with what we're doing.’ There was one hand left in the air, and it was Yannick [Bolloré, CEO of Havas].

“Most people launch an agency, they get bought by somebody, and then they go and fix something they weren't designed to fix. They get folded in. We haven't done that.”

During his keynote address at Advertising Council Australia and AWARD’s This Way Up event on Tuesday, Nils said two years on, the team is “nowhere near done with our ambitions.”

When he launched the studio in 2017 alongside Natalie Graeme and Lucy Jameson, Nils’ biggest goal was to be “the most important, influential studio of our time, and to work on the most important, influential briefs of our time. 

“We thought about what they were – it’s the Olympic torch, the 9/11 memorials, things that really mattered. We're just about getting those briefs.

“We're still very, very, very driven as founders and as a studio.”

That doesn’t mean he’d replicate the studio’s journey if he had his time over. He admitted if he was setting up an agency today, he’d take inspiration from Daft Punk and Banksy and remain anonymous. The mystery would be an antidote to social media self promotion and it “would be sick”.

“Imagine for a brief second that there was an agency or studio, and you didn't know what the fuck they looked like or who they were,” he challenged.

“Be invisible, be scarce, never apologise, never explain, disappear, win. Wouldn't it be powerful if we weren't on LinkedIn the whole time, if we shut the doors? If I could do it again, that's what I’d do.”

If he had a time machine with Uncommon though, he’d act quicker on the business’ ‘no passengers’ policy. While he feels“very grateful for what we've done and for everything we've built,” he admitted, “we could have gotten even further.”

“Being candid, I think we weren't quick enough to move on some people we knew weren't right along the journey,” he said.

“We have this phrase, which is ‘no passengers’, and we mean it for our clients, and we mean it for our people. If we'd had the culture of excellence we have now from the very start – and maybe we couldn't have, maybe you learn those lessons as you go – I think we could have gone much, much quicker at a much higher level and genuinely been more game changing, more fast. 

“That sounds incredibly merciless to say, but I think people and your standards around people are absolutely everything.”

He also wished the team was historically better at listening to a kernel of belief, and using it to push good ideas further, because “I don’t think enough of us in this industry believe things are going to work.”

He gave the example of RATBOOT, a knee-high black leather boot on a caged platform, housing rats. Uncommon made it last year because it opened a New York office, post-Havas buying a stake, and wanted to create a stir during New York Fashion Week. It blew up. A model and stylist wearing a pair generated interest with The Cut and New York Post. Then a content creator’s video reached a bigger audience than the Super Bowl.

“We sort of knew it would be famous, because fashion week in New York is a thing,” Nils said.

“We had no idea how famous. It got 140 million views, that one clip. I should have had 100,000 ‘I Rat New York’ t-shirts [made]. RATBOOT should be a line item on the studio's P&L. It should be a regular fixture of fashion shows.

“We knew, man, we fucking knew. I think that's true of so many projects. And so that belief, I promise you, is so contagious to the studio. It's fucking like fire. I think if we believed, it would have changed everything, and we would be a very different studio. 

“So I wish we believed earlier, and still do. I still have to get people in the lift and tell them I know it's gonna [be okay] and so I think that spirit, somehow really trying to get people into that, is key.”

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