Waypointers – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In this, the third episode in our MENA region series we get down to brass tacks.

Partner Phil Gripton is joined by Nick Walsh, founder of Migrate, to explore in forensic detail how agencies can successfully enter and grow in the MENA market. After nearly 18 years leading network agencies across the Middle East, Nick now helps independents “land, expand, and thrive” there. He set up Migrate to de-risk market entry and provide leadership teams with a route map for sustainable growth.

Together Phil and Nick unpack the mechanics of successful expansion: why many agencies stumble on setup; talent and positioning; how to pace investment; and why a phased “test and scale” model will usually outperform cookie-cutter global playbooks.

They also explore the emerging indie ecosystem and new initiatives Nick is spearheading, e.g. creating an independent agency directory to make it easier for brands to find specialist partners as well as helping launch the Alliance of independent Agencies in the region.

Whether you’re a founder, investor or agency leader weighing entry, expansion or acquisition, this conversation provides practical advice on getting MENA right from someone who’s lived and breathed agency growth in the region for almost two decades.

Key themes include:

• The indie opportunity: Networks are still over-represented in the region (around 80 / 20) and independents under-indexed. So the latter have space to win.
• Foundations first: Get legal setup, licensing, procurement registration and banking right; build for MENA realities (payment terms, gratuities, processes).
• Invest with growth, not ahead of it: Phase hiring and overheads; target foundational clients; plan a realistic 3-to-5-year path.
• Positioning for the region: Don’t copy and paste your home market story and approach
• Talent and culture: Blend HQ “firepower” with local capability; avoid all-expat teams; hire for cultural fluency.

The MENA region offers growth on a scale hard to find elsewhere, but only for those willing to commit, adapt, and align with the region’s long-term vision.

In this episode of Waypointers, partner Jim Houghton is joined by Mike Khouri, Founder & CEO of Tactical.

Together they explore the realities of scaling an agency in one of the fastest-growing, but most nuanced, markets in the world and how Mike and his team have done the hard yard to become one of the region’s pre-eminent independent social agencies.

From the role of AI and innovation, to the local nuances of key markets such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Mike discusses why agencies with a “fly in and fly out” attitude often fail. He explains why investing in truly understanding the region, or to use his words, “going deep on the terrain”, and long-term alignment with specific national visions are critical for lasting success.

Whether you’re a founder, investor, or agency leader eyeing expansion, investment, or acquisition, this episode offers clear insights into what works, and what doesn’t, in MENA’s dynamic landscape.

Key themes include:

• Why local depth matters: Global playbooks rarely succeed; agencies must invest on the ground, hire locally, and understand cultural nuance.
• Growth with discipline: Tactical simplified from 18 services down to 4, focusing on what truly delivers long-term results for clients.
• What buyers should look for: Investors should value sustained client success, team retention, and deep market integration.
• The regional dynamic: The UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and beyond - each offers distinct opportunities, underpinned by ambitious national agendas like Saudi’s Vision 2030 and Dubai’s D33.

A new challenger on the block

At Waypoint we talk often about Challengers, fast growing agencies and agency groups that are born digital and performance first, who deliver on the “modern marketing brief.”

In this episode, Waypoint partner
Matt Lacey profiles a new entrant to the
Challenger cohort. That new entrant is SAMY Alliance, a fast-growing, social-first agency group, intent on
partnering with the world’s most recognisable brands who are seeking a modern, social-first solution.

SAMY already has impressive scale – 500 people globally, a client base that includes Kia, L’Oreal, Maybelline, Microsoft and Netflix, and investment from Bridgepoint.

In the studio with Matt to tell the SAMY story is Rocio Lama, head of strategy and corporate development for SAMY Alliance. Rocio heads up a six strong M&A team in Madrid, working to deliver on the group’s growth ambitions. 

 Growth strategy

Rocio talks to Matt about SAMY’s M&A activity to date. The group has been acquiring in the UK, Europe and the US since 2019 and has a proven track record of successfully integrating agencies and driving value in them.

SAMY is an exciting proposition for entrepreneurial agency founders looking at the next chapter in their growth journey; a fast-scaling business where they can play a role in something much bigger.

And now, with support from professional investors, SAMY is focusing in on new targets in the US and Europe, what it describes as “anchor” acquisitions that will transform the group.

In short, SAMY’s sights are set on sector leadership. And as social starts to takes its place at the client top table, the future is set to be an exciting one.

Some agency and tech businesses have got their processes around tendering for public sectors contracts off to a tee. Many others are put off by a set of negative perceptions; that the whole thing is beset with red tape and simply not worth the hassle. They might have tendered in the past, simply to learn several weeks after the cutoff date, that they’ve not been successful. No feedback, no learning, no nothing. No wonder they decided not to go back for more.

Changing times

Very soon all of that is set to change. The Public Sector Procurement Act, 2023, endeavours to level the playing field for SMEs and to give them far better access to government contracts. 

In this episode, Waypoint partner Phil Gripton talks to two experts in this area. 

The first, Martin Traynor OBE, is the former Small Business Crown Representative at The Cabinet Office. Martin explains the legislative changes that are coming into effect from October 2024 and which he played a key role in developing. He also outlines why they present an attractive new opportunity for SMEs.

The second, Danny Herbert is an independent agency veteran who’s tendered for and won many public sector contracts during his career. He helps unpack the significance of the changes and explains how SMEs should be preparing for what’s coming.

The best kept secret

From October 2024 the government will have to spend £1 in every £3 with SMEs. So why aren’t more people talking about this big change? The public sector has recognised that innovation often lives in small businesses and as a result, is looking to simplify and open up the procurement process to them. This episode of Waypointers aims to spread the word.

At a time when new business is hard to come by and many agencies are feeling the pinch, now is a great time to find out about new revenue opportunities that are opening up.

Quite simply, the changes are better for business, better for government, driving value for money for the British tax payer and empowering SMEs to win government contracts.

Disruption is a recurrent theme in our Waypointers podcast and it often happens at the hands of outsiders – as our previous episode with a former US Marine, Justin Lewis shows. The guest in our latest episode is Simon Martin, the founder and chief executive of Oliver. Over the last 20 years Simon has brought significant disruption to the ad industry. His unique perspective comes from having started his career in the insurance sector where he saw the way in which deeply embedded relationships with clients drove significant efficiencies, business opportunities and growth.  

How it all started 

When he left his CMO role in insurance and set up Oliver, he brought a new mindset and practice to the ad agency sector. Very soon, the in-housing model that Oliver pioneered was being adopted by some of the most highly prized clients.

Now part of the Brandtech Group, Oliver is 5,000 people in 60 countries, servicing 300 clients and is five times bigger today than it was at the start of Covid.

Oliver’s route to success

Simon explains to Waypoint partner Jim Houghton Oliver’s model of “people, process and technology” which allows it to work in genuine collaboration and partnership with client organisations. It also makes it unbeatable when it comes to efficiency and productivity.

Serving in the military provides a unique perspective on leadership. In this episode of the podcast, Waypoint Partner Matt Lacey sat down with former US marine Justin Lewis to learn about his very personal form of leadership at Constellation, a collective of best-in-class agencies within challenger network, Stagwell.
 

Justin’s take on leadership is inspiring and he speaks with great passion. There is much here for new and experienced agency heads alike to learn as well as for entrepreneurs looking to build best in class businesses. When he was not long out of the marines and working out what to do as a civilian, Justin fell in love with the new online world and learnt to code. He went on to found digital agency, Instrument with his two partners, bringing to bear the skills honed in the military, to successfully grow the business and eventually sell to MDC (now part of Stagwell).

Justin’s interpretation of culture is an unusual one. He believes that a corporate culture should never be fixed at a point in time. Instead, it should flex whenever there is a new arrival on the team. Only by doing this can it remain meaningful to everyone in the business, while taking care not to lose sight of its north star. That is a difficult balance to tread.

Justin provides some great examples of what he learnt from his time in the marines. How to bring people with you on a journey; how to make them feel like they matter by remembering something unique about them even when there are several hundred people in a team; how to define values that are authentic to the agency and that everyone can identify with.

Matt and Justin agree that growing a business is about so much more than numbers on a balance sheet. If there is a poor culture or the leaders are not aligned, then that’s becomes evident pretty clearly and a buyer like Justin will quickly walk away.  

For incredible insight into great leadership, like nothing you’ve heard before, check out the latest episode of Waypointers.

As a sector, market research has been experimenting with machine learning and predictive algorithms earlier than many other parts of the marketing services industry; the same is true of AI. Research group STRAT7 has been building expertise in AI well ahead of ChatGPT and generative AI becoming mainstream.

This AI themed episode of Waypointers sees STRAT7 leaders Barrie Brien and Paul Jackson in conversation with Waypoint’s tech editor Martin Ward explaining their approach to harnessing AI for competitive advantage. 

They talk about investing in and creating what is effectively an AI centre of excellence at the heart of STRAT7 that can be accessed through every agency in the business. This working group of consultants, data scientists, engineers, modellers and other specialists collaborates to build the best possible products and services to drive value for clients

Some of the agencies Waypoint has spoken to as part of the Waypointers AI series have encouraged their stuff to experiment with public tools such as ChatGPT. STRAT7 has taken a very different approach and has built its own AI tool, strat7GPT.  Paul and Barrie talk about the balance they struck between speeding up strategic delivery to STRAT7 clients while ensuring this is always done within a secure environment that supports confidentiality agreements and allows the agency to maintain control of client data to remove any risk of it leaking into the public domain.

To hear more about the strategic decision making involved in building AI into the heart of a business and how to bring people and clients along the way, tune into this fascinating episode of Waypointers.

2023 was a busy year for M&A in the PR/comms industry. One of the most significant of these deals was announced in October when Lansons was acquired by Team Farner.   

This episode of Waypointers sees Gordon Tempest-Hay, the CEO of Lansons telling Waypoint partner Jim Houghton the story behind the deal headlines and his and Farner’s ambitions – “to become the European management consultancy for integrated communications”.  Farner might not be a well-known entity in the UK, but that’s about to change. 

We also hear about Gordon’s rather circuitous route into the comms industry by way of spending almost ten years trying to make it as a rock star (hint, he came very close!)

Once in the industry, from working in-house at the DWP, Gordon moved agency side, taking up roles at some of its most notable businesses – Fishburn Hedges, Blue Rubicon, Teneo/Blue Rubicon and from 2022, Lansons. 

At BR/Teneo, and then again when Lansons became part of Waterland backed Farner, he’s had plenty of experience working with private equity investors.  He talks positively about the value they bring to a partnership and the support they have provided him in good times as well as bad.

To mark the start of 2024 this episode of Waypointers looks to the future, specifically the future of AI and tech more broadly, covering business, society and beyond.

Our guest is the inspirational Nell Watson, one of the most compelling global voices discussing the direction of travel for AI and tech. 

Nell is a tech ethicist, researcher and reformer,  “a trailblazer in emerging technologies such as machine vision and A.I. ethics.” She is president of the European Responsible AI Office and AI Expert at Singularity University. She also pioneers global standards as an AI Ethics Certification Maestro at IEEE. She advises leading organisations on their machine learning strategies, specialising in AI research and ethical advocacy.

Her conversation with Waypoint’s tech lead and partner, Martin Ward, is a wide ranging one that has something for everyone. Together they cover the importance of smart leadership in an increasingly AI driven world; how malign actors may look to harness AI and what society can do to protect itself; how AI will increasingly manifest in our day to day – e.g. domestic robots, AI girlfriends/boyfriends/companions and how breathtaking developments in AI will force us to question what it means to be human…..and much, much more!