Waypointers

Waypoint Partners
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Waypointers

Waypointers is the go-to podcast for agency leaders. In this series, produced by Waypoint Partners, we bring together the brightest minds in the industry and our own in-house growth advisory specialists to share illuminating conversations to grow your agency.    Bringing you insights, analysis and knowledge from the leading lights of the UK agency landscape, Waypointers is a must-listen for aspirational agency leaders.    Subscribe to Waypointers wherever you get your podcasts.    Waypoint Partners is an expert global growth and M&A advisory firm providing support to businesses in the marketing services and technology sectors.

  1. 4D AGO

    42. Is your agency missing out on the Dubai/GCC Boom? Here’s what you need to know

    At a time when growth is hard to come by in traditional markets, the Gulf offers something rare: scale, ambition, excitement and clients hungry for transformation.  In this episode of Waypointers, partner Jim Houghton sits down with colleague, MD Gary Whyte to explore the opportunity and discuss why it’s not always a straightforward play for agencies; missteps can easily happen for businesses that don’t do their homework. Gary shares practical lessons from working with independent agencies across Dubai and the wider GCC region including a highlight; taking fast-growing local agency Create Group on a journey that culminated in Gary and his team advising on their sale to Stagwell earlier this year. Whether you're considering acquisition, expansion or partnership, this episode offers valuable insights into navigating a market where growth is very much on the table, but local knowledge is key.  This episode kicks off a new Waypoint series focused on the Middle East, offering advice for anyone looking to enter the market or take their existing operations further.

    26 min

  2. MAY 14

    41. Organisational culture – a world expert reveals her formula for success – in conversation with Professor Dame Vlatka Hlupic

    Waypointers

    28 min

  3. APR 16

    40. Is your agency truly change ready? Lessons from the performance marketing sector

    Agencies in the performance marketing sector are arguably having to face up to change faster than other parts of marketing services. When the platforms you’ve built your career and businesses around over the last 20 years are suddenly transforming, you have to reinvent yourself or face oblivion. For this Waypointers episode (link) partner Phil Gripton talks to someone who was there at the dawn of performance, Joe Procter, co-founder of Open Partners. Open Partners was founded around the concept of “agency of next”,  which Joe explains as “preparing clients for a future that hasn’t happened yet, so that they can adapt to that future faster than their competitors can.” How quickly this change is happening in performance is plain for all to see. Google’s share of search dropped below 90% for the first time in 15 years, driven by the fast-growing trend to use AI for search. A recent Gartner report predicted that within three years, 50 % of organic traffic from google will have disappeared. Fundamentally if performance agencies don’t prepare for that future, they face an extinction event. There is no one silver bullet that allows a business to successfully face up to seismic change, especially change that is driven by external forces. But Joe’s approach provides a strong blueprint for any agency leadership team who is looking to prepare for an uncertain future.

    27 min

  4. MAR 12

    39. How the right bank can turbo-charge your agency’s growth: In conversation with Frazer Barrs, head of media, Barclays

    Private equity grabs most of the headlines in our sector, but without the range of facilities your bank has to offer, you might find it hard to grow your agency effectively. Exactly quite how significant that contribution can be comes to life in this latest Waypointers episode (link), where partner Matt Lacey talks to Frazer Barrs, Head of Media, within Barclays Corporate. If you thought you knew what your bank can do for your scaled business, you’re in for a few surprises. Frazer’s appearance on Waypointers comes as Barclays is approaching 40 years supporting businesses across media, marketing and creative industries, although Frazer is keen to point out he’s only been in role for around fifteen of those years! What listeners will immediately notice is Frazer’s infectious passion for the sector. Our industry can at times be really hard on itself but Frazer reminds us that the wider creative sector is rooting for our part of the market to do well. In his words, “advertising is the fuel that powers the industry” and if we’re having a tough time, then that means less available budget to commission and make great content across the board – film, TV, radio, gaming and so on. Barclays’ four decades of support and commitment to the sector means the bank has seen it grow and navigate a number of cyclical downturns, coming back stronger each time, resilient and able to reinvent itself.  Frazer does a great job of reminding listeners why ours is a great industry and why Barclays is committed to it.

    32 min

  5. FEB 12

    38. Our 2025 agency hot tip – fast-growing, award winning, “Anything is Possible”

    A successful agency founder needs conviction and vision. Sam Fenton-Elstone, the CEO and founding partner of ‘Anything is Possible’ has both in abundance. In this episode of Waypointers, Sam gives our listeners an up-close and personal insight into the journey he’s been on so far, and where he and his team are taking ‘Anything is Possible’. If you’ve not yet worked it out from the name of his agency, Sam is on a no-holds barred growth mission. He’s taken his learnings from some of the big industry roles he’s held at iCrossing and then VCCP and created something compelling and new at his seven-year-old agency. The kind of culture needed for the pace of growth Sam is targeting, requires people who are “possibilists”, supporting Sam as “Possiblist-in-Chief.” The agency now has plenty of data on what to look for when recruiting and they’ve nailed the people bit of the equation. In the same way, they’ve also worked out the kind of client that allows them to deliver on their vision. The results speak for themselves – 90 people, 40% YoY growth and in some cases extraordinary five-year client contracts, as well as the pursuit of growth in places that are in some instances off the beaten track. The agency really does live up to its name! Waypoint partner, Phil Gripton quizzes Sam on the nitty gritty of how he’s delivered exceptional growth; how he’s succeeded where much of the performance industry he operates within has struggled, and what the agency’s next chapter looks like.

    33 min

  6. JAN 15

    37. Do you have the CFO your agency needs to grow?

    Driving agency growth depends on a strong leadership team and that includes having a CFO who is deeply embedded within the business. Or at least that’s the way it should be. Despite this being a role that is central to agency success, conversations about what makes for a good CFO, including skillset and behaviour, gets relatively little airtime in our industry press. Ironically that changes when things go wrong, and then the CFO becomes a useful scapegoat, sometimes even finding themselves in the glare of negative publicity defending company performance and where the numbers “went wrong”. In this episode of Waypointers, we shine a light on the value that a strong CFO can bring to any ambitious agency. Adrian Talbot, CFO at the global marketing business Miroma, is a highly experienced practitioner who believes in getting involved with every aspect of the business. In this conversation with Waypoint partner, Matt Lacey, Adrian talks about how he’s adapted the CFO role in his image, making it a very “human centred” one. That has meant getting involved in parts of the business where a CFO might often find themselves “warned away” from or where they’d simply not think to look. In the same way that creatives might traditionally have been kept away from clients for fear of what they might say or do, CFOs may have to contend with similar attitudes. But by building firm ties across the agencies he’s worked at over the years, with leadership teams, staff and clients, Adrian has carved out a much more holistic CFO role.

    35 min

  7. 12/05/2024

    36. Coca-Cola’s AI Xmas – a sign of advertising creative to come?

    Most of the year, the advertising industry barely registers in the world at large. But that changes as we head into the festive season. Indeed, the first Christmas TV ads increasingly mark the start of this season and conversations about ad creative enter the mainstream. Pretty much everyone has a view on the year’s John Lewis ad as it makes headlines across both traditional and social media. With this in mind, there’s no better time to focus in on advertising creative – the state of play and where it’s headed. In this episode of Waypointers, partner Matt Lacey is joined by Stephen Barnes, co-founder of Collective. Stephen is brilliantly placed to talk about the future of advertising creative because he and his team are pushing the boundaries, using technology to radically change the way ads are made. Pioneering the use of digital twins, he’s not only allowing global brands to do much more with less – some may decide never to run a photoshoot ever again - but he’s also allowing them to do “creativity at the speed of thought” trying out new ideas in real time in ways that would be impossible on a traditional set.

    28 min

  8. 11/20/2024

    35. Becoming an expert negotiator – lessons from the pros

    If you ask most agency leaders, very few will claim to enjoy negotiating. Sure, it’s a necessary part of business, but secretly most of them will be wondering how they could do things better. Could they have got negotiated better payment terms; could they have secured a larger remit with a client; could they have hired that senior person for less?   Plus, negotiating can be filled with emotion, and dealing with emotion in the workplace can be deeply uncomfortable.   This lively and at times, humorous episode of Waypointers features not one, but two experts discussing ways of improving negotiation skills, with scenarios lifted from their working lives. They clearly lived to tell the tale, but there were some potentially career ending moments along the way!   In the negotiation hotseat are Waypoint’s Jim Houghton, the author of a recent book, The Work Smarter Guide to Negotiation, co-written with Kirk Kinnell, a hostage negotiator and counter-terrorism expert, and chief negotiation officer Sam Macbeth, with many years’ experience helping business leaders and agency heads smarten up their negotiation tactics.  Picking their brains and asking the difficult questions is Waypoint partner, Phil Gripton.

    41 min
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About

Waypointers is the go-to podcast for agency leaders. In this series, produced by Waypoint Partners, we bring together the brightest minds in the industry and our own in-house growth advisory specialists to share illuminating conversations to grow your agency.    Bringing you insights, analysis and knowledge from the leading lights of the UK agency landscape, Waypointers is a must-listen for aspirational agency leaders.    Subscribe to Waypointers wherever you get your podcasts.    Waypoint Partners is an expert global growth and M&A advisory firm providing support to businesses in the marketing services and technology sectors.

Information

  • Creator
    Waypoint Partners
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    42
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Waypointers
  • Show Website
    Waypointers

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