How I created the most successful agency of the 90’s - Rupert Howell, HHCL & Partners

Rupert Howell is one of the founders of the advertising agency HHCL & Partners famous for campaigns for Tango, The AA, Ronseal, First Direct and Go amongst to name just a few. They were awarded ‘Agency of the Decade’ by Campaign in the 1990’s and experienced phenomenal growth for over a decade before being sold to Chime.

We covered so much ground in this bumper 2 hour episode, so here's the list of what we touched upon:

How Rupert made HHCL the best agency of the 90’s
Ruperts New Business Mantra – Honesty. Respect. Trust.
Why saying ‘I don’t know’ and ‘we got it wrong’ is so important
How the agency’s sole focus is Advertising but the Clients sole focus is the business
Why new business should always be separate to the day to day account management
How Rupert became ‘the finest new business director of all time’
How to win a pitch even after you have lost it
Why the pitch process begins with the phone call and only ends when its announced in Campaign
The sole purpose of the pitch is to win and not to solve the clients business problem
Why HHCL had a strike rate of 65% for new business
What the company annual report can tell you for the pitch process
Why you should try and get your customer promoted
How Carling Black Label inspired the most successful Tango Advertising of all time
How Tango destroyed Fanta and forced Coke to withdraw it from the market
How a call from a Surgeon led to the Tango Slap commercial being withdraw from market
Why the ‘4th Emergency Service’ transformed The AA and how the bold idea was sold in
How spending time with an AA team out on a call led to the idea
The importance of winning your internal teams and why they matter as much as your customers
Interrogating the product until ‘it confesses its strength’
Why the harder you practice the luckier you get is just as true for an agency
The real hard yards of the start-up phase that meant not taking a day off in 3 years
How tabloids create controversy and how to respond to it
Why relationships are the secret to really succeeding in business
Turning down offers to sell the agency including a £1million bribe
Why HHCL accepted an offer from Chime with the support from Sir Martin Sorrell
Why so few agencies ever succeed after being acquired by a network
Why HHCL was never the same after Rupert left and why he would never go back
The importance of timing for Founders handing over to the next generation
Dealing with bullies, bribary and negotiating an exit from McCann with a boat & DB9 as consolation
Which celebrities are still speaking to Rupert after he left ITV
Why social media is driven by click bait and negative headlines
Why you should give up the news, except perhaps local news
The Pros and Cons of a British free press
How to get a non-exec role

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Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com