Thought Leaders; Thought Followers
26 January 2026
I don’t much like this time of year. In London it’s wet, dreary, cold, dark, that’s true, but far worse this seems to be the time of year for memorials and saying goodbye.
Just in the last two or three months (and only in my world) we have lost Denise Turner, the IPA’s Research Director at an unfairly young age, my old agency colleague Bryan Smith, and the peerless Dominic Proctor, CEO of JWT, Founder CEO at Mindshare. As I wrote in another place, Dom was loved not only by those who worked for him and with him but by those of us who competed against him.
WPP Media put on a fine memorial for Dom. There were many of us old agency guys there, many memories to unearth and enjoy.
In one conversation with JWT’s one time Media Director, Ron de Pear we got on to agency thought leaders; and where are they?
In my (and Ron’s) day we had big thinkers in the agencies to look up to: Jeremy Bullmore, Stephen King, Simon Broadbent, David Abbott, John Hegarty, John Webster, Paul Feldwick.
In the media world the likes of John Perris, John Billett, Mike Yershon, Chris Ingram were all highly visible. What they had to say about the business and the media was consequential, and mattered.
Where are the media agency thought leaders of today? Those who should surely be leading, those at the top of the largest media agencies tend to stay quiet. When you work for a large corporate you presumably need to check every public pronouncement with some group PR in case of causing offence.
This leads to the mundane, the avoidance of controversy. Agencies these days follow, they don’t lead the business.
Today’s thought leaders are more likely to be consultants, media vendors, research suppliers than agencies. Go and listen to any panel of agency leaders at any conference. What you get is violent agreement; a competition not to challenge.
With agency revenues coming from so many sources these days you need fancy footwork not to upset your paymasters.
It’s not just the lack of original thinking in agencies that Ron and I were decrying, but the disappearance of deep business relationships.
A number of years ago there was a memorial for Peter Howard-Williams. For those who don’t remember Peter, he was Mr Cinema. He was a larger-than-life legend.
He retired to sunnier climes and then sadly passed away.
His memorial was attended by a who’s who of the media world. Agencies, salesmen, clients, past and present.
I remember wondering at the time if anything comparable would ever happen again.
In Peter’s day the human touch in sales counted.
Is this just nostalgic rambling? Up to a point, but in an era within which we all agree that collaboration is key; that creativity in advertising is no longer a department but everyone’s responsibility, we need human interaction more than ever.
Listening to the reminiscences the other evening from those who knew Dom Proctor best what stuck out was the humanity at the heart of all the stories. He succeeded; Mindshare succeeded with the toughest clients because of this.
Of course he was smart, a man who, as the current boss of WPP Media, Brian Lesser pointed out, spotted talent and encouraged everyone to strive for excellence, with a smile. He was also, as the number of sales guys present indicated, a partner, a seeker after great ideas from wherever.
We need more Doms, now more than ever at just the time when I fear they’re in short supply.