Why MullenLowe Is Staying Positively Dissatisfied

“Stay positively dissatisfied.” The driving mantra behind MullenLowe’s latest rebrand is a call to do things differently, innovate and get people talking. The network’s SVP, head of strategy in the US, Ellie Gogan-Tilstone, is the brains behind the new positioning, which she says is rerouting the company through the competitive spirit of the “epitome of challengers”, Jim Mullen and Frank Lowe.

“It’s got a swagger to it,” she says, speaking with LBB’s Ben Conway. “It’s not dissatisfaction like always ramming your head against a wall, it’s a fun kind of anger.” 

This sentiment was reflected in the visual aspect of the rebrand, which the network’s head of design João Paz described to LBB earlier this year as expressing “the fluidity of a Matisse with the anger of a Keith Haring”. The iconic octopus remains, albeit with a new, customisable look, as well as a fresh attitude inspired by the octopus’ 500 million years of adaptation and its ability to edit its own DNA.

Joining the network in November 2022, global CEO Kristen Cavallo spearheaded the new rebrand on a global scale, listening to input from every office while applying her ‘outside perspective’ as a fresh hire. Following the new CEO’s line of ‘if we can't distinguish ourselves from our competitors, how can we ask the client to have the same confidence in us to do it for their brand?’, Ellie says it was vital that MullenLowe’s global network be unified by the new identity, while making them stand out. 

“It’s ironic that the ad industry itself has a branding problem. There are lots of people with great agency positionings, but there’s also a lot of similarity,” she says. “Our big goal became to make our own agency our best case study.”

Without over-defining the new positioning for its clients and talent, a core pillar of the strategy emerged: the need to ‘always be challenging something’. And since the rebrand, it appears this mantra has stuck. “There's limitless enemies to pick for the brands that we work on,” says Ellie, “and it's been really fun to see work coming out and new business pitches with people leveraging this language. Not just in slideshows, but as an ethos and an attitude. It’s cool to see it seeping in, and not as a joke or facetiously either.”

The head of strategy explains that the new ethos is already playing an important outward-facing role, being used as a filter to decide which pitches its offices take part in, and as a talking point in workshops and conversations with existing clients. 

However, equally as important is the rebranding’s internal impact. Ensuring that the strategy is internalised across all departments and not simply words on a page is tantamount to the sleek new visuals and external perception.

“A positively dissatisfied strategy department needs to be an engine of bravery,” says Ellie. “And I think this kind of positioning has not just given people the freedom to think and write as bravely as possible, it's also created an expectation.”

This expectation has started to influence MullenLowe’s talent already, with Ellie observing less tentative and safe work being pitched, in favour of brave ideas and instinctual decisions. Part of this is only natural, as the new philosophy has resurfaced an excited and fun energy across the network which has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for MullenLowe’s creatives. 

“Nobody gets into this business to make boring, uninteresting, un-innovative work,” she says. “They want to make more amazing, interesting work. Yes, there are rewards too, but that in and of itself is kind of a great reward - it’s just a more fun thing to do now.”

Furthermore, Ellie believes this challenging and relentlessly innovative approach isn’t just more fun for creatives, but a necessity for survival in today’s industry. “A brand's greatest threat today is not another brand, a competitor in your category, it’s going to be your own comfort zone,” she says, “The biggest enemy is stagnation, because stagnation is ultimately where growth goes to die.”

Citing the research that influenced her strategy, Ellie explains that innovative brands that adapt and push themselves grow faster and are ultimately more successful long-term. So, treating MullenLowe as they would any of their clients’ brands, the path forward was clear: to stay positively dissatisfied.

“Every brand has not just the opportunity, but the responsibility to innovate,” she says. “There's kind of a mandate for thinking in this way. And we are looking for clients who share that belief fundamentally… companies that want to reinvent and repeat and reinvent and repeat.”

“It’s not subjective,” she adds. “Innovative brands grow faster. If you don't want to grow faster, that's up to you. But we're not here to push the envelope for the sake of pushing the envelope. We're doing it because we want to build and grow your business. And this is the best way to do that.”