Interview: TBWAMCR boss Fergus McCallum on a life in marketing, the agency’s MBO – and why he starts every day with the Racing Post

“I spent two years there – it was a fantastic grounding in marketing. At that time, beer advertising was probably right at the top of the creative spectrum. Brands like Heineken and Stella Artois were producing absolutely stellar pieces of advertising.”

From there he moved to Greenall’s brewery in Warrington, where he was brand manager of its lager division and launched Labatts into the UK.

McCallum was not yet 25 but despite two decent client-side roles under his belt, a certain frustration was beginning to creep in.

“I was primarily interested in the creative side of my role but I got a bit bored just working on the same thing all the time. The breadth and variety of what you do at an agency really appealed.

“I got a phone call from one of my old bosses at Grand Met (Grand Metropolitan Hotels Ltd, which owned Wilson’s Brewery) who was working for an agency in Edinburgh at the time.”

McCallum returned to Edinburgh to join KLP, which became part of EURO RSCG which itself became Havas.

He felt at home “almost immediately”. “There was the variety of course, but I liked the idea of trying to do better work than everybody else. I was always quite ambitious from that point of view.”

He worked up from account director to become managing director of the business in Scotland, working with brands including Guinness, Carling, Smirnoff and Bailey’s, as well as having responsibility for the group’s relationship with Diageo.

In 2005, he received a phone call out of the blue asking if he’d be interested in becoming chief executive role for one of the businesses within TBWA, Tequila in Manchester.

Although initially he wasn’t that interested, the then Chester-based McCallum soon came round to the idea of working a bit closer to home, having been splitting his week between Edinburgh and London.

“It was a punt, but I instantly liked the people there,” says McCallum, who two years later became chief operating officer of TBWAManchester when TBWA moved all of its Manchester agencies – which included the 50-strong Tequila – under one roof. By 2009 he was chief exec.

The move has worked out. Seventeen years later, McCallum remains in charge and as motivated as ever.

“I’ve enjoyed it massively. I really like the people here. I like that sense of being in Manchester and being a bit of a protagonist against London, it appeals to the Scot in me, the challenger spirit.

“Advertising in the UK is a bit like politics. It can be very London-centric and people don’t really get a sense of what The Great British Public are about, and by being in Manchester it gives us an advantage somehow.”

Although the agency enjoyed contrasting fortunes during the mid-2010s – turnover dipped from £5.7million in 2014 to £3.7m in 2017 – two significant developments have proved transformative in recent years.

For many years the agency was based in Didsbury but in 2018 it moved to Canada House, a Grade II Listed former packaging warehouse on Chepstow Street, when Omnicom Group centralised its Northern operations in Manchester city centre.

“Didsbury is a nice place to work but we were one office in the middle of a residential estate, and from my point of view, I don’t think that’s the best place for a creative agency to be,” says McCallum. “The danger is you become a little bit sleepy. The move to the city centre has been very good for us.”

And then two years ago, shortly after the first lockdown, McCallum, together with finance director Paul Tinker, Lorna Hawtin, Lisa Nichols, Gary Fawcett and John Triner, led a management buy-out.

The result, says McCallum, is “the best of both worlds”.

“We’re still very much part of the TBWA collective: we still have regular meetings with other senior people in the agency group and we have access to absolutely everything that was part of TBWA before.

“The difference is we can make our own decisions in terms of investment, where we want to grow the business and the type of people we want to recruit and bring in. It’s about being masters of your own destiny.”

Creatively, the agency is on a roll. It now works with all of Merlin Entertainments’ main resorts and is responsible for all the creative on any BP forecourt in the country. Other clients include garden product suppliers Westland, jewellers Beaverbrooks and David Lloyd.

“David Lloyd Clubs has been a real success over the last three years,” McCallum says. “We’ve been able to take them on a really positive journey about how they separate themselves out from not being a gym, but being a leisure destination. It’s helped them to grow their membership.”

There’s now a profit share scheme in place for staff, and the agency was back to £5.5m revenues for its most recent financial year, to June 2021, with this year set to be slightly more. Profit stands at about 10% after bonuses. McCallum insists the focus is not on trying to make “mega profits”.

So what does McCallum, approaching 35 years of agency experience, hope to bring to the table?

“One of my rallying cries every week is about the importance of the creative product and how important it is that everybody sees that as their job. Whether you’re in the finance team, an account manager, a planner or a creative, you have to have a love for creativity and a love for advertising in its broadest sense.

“We talk about the power of three, which is the person who looks after the client, the strategist and the creative. When they work really well together there’s an alchemy that comes out of it, and no role is more important than the other, they all help to make that great creative work.”

As for the boss, it seems that morning routine won’t be changing any time soon.

“I’ll keep going as long as I can. I just really enjoy it. I’m not sitting here thinking I’m going to retire at 65, I really don’t have that thought in my head at all.”