Last supper: Outgoing creative chief at Accenture Song and The Monkeys Scott Nowell on culturally infiltrating Accenture, failed beer fridge bans, pulling a reverse takeover of Saatchis and why Accenture Song is ‘outperforming’ the consulting growth curve

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Many predicted The Monkeys would be “roadkill” when Accenture in 2017 paid $63m for Australia’s hottest ad agency, its creative culture steamrollered by the immaculately polished heads of the consulting world. Instead, says creative chief Scott Nowell, who last week departed the agency he co-founded, The Monkeys began a cultural infiltration mission. Six years on, the broader Accenture Song creative-customer model has turned heads in the broader Accenture business – because it’s largely outperforming. That’s not to say there weren’t some awkward early moments. “A request that we lock our beer fridges until 5 p.m. went down very badly,” says Nowell, a diktat that lasted roughly six hours. Ultimately, in a firm with hundreds of thousands of employees and monolithic process rigidity, you have to learn to work the system, he acknowledges. He admits moving from a nimble business to a hierarchical consulting giant can take some getting used to: “You’ve just got to ask a lot of people if you can do something or not.” Either way, after some mutual “bum sniffing” the “more closed” corporate and “more open” advertising packs began to run together – and start building products and solutions that go well beyond advertising. That’s changed the capability The Monkeys now seeks, with “creatives who have that interest in broader business solutions” first order. Whether Nowell climbs back into the saddle, time will tell. But for now he’s smelling the roses after 17 years building a business that won everything going, rejected an offer to reverse takeover Saatchi & Saatchi locally, came close to forming a “pan-Pacific micro network” with Goodby Silverstein and tried – and failed – to revive ice cream brand, Homer Hudson, which it co-owned. His advice to anyone starting their own agency today? “Start smarter … get an accountant … try and balance your life.”

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