Ben Lilley is an Australian creative entrepreneur and corporate finance investor with a background as a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of award-winning creative advertising agencies across Australia with agency offerings across integrated brand strategy, marketing communications, digital development and digital agency services through Melbourne advertising, Queensland advertising and Sydney advertising agency offices

How I came to be a creative entrepreneur is a bit of a long story. So let's start with the short version.

After kicking off my advertising career as a multinational agency creative, I soon became frustrated with the traditional agency model. In 2000, as a creatively ambitious but commercially clueless 28 year old, I decided to launch my own agency, SMART. Over the next decade, I clued-up pretty fast, almost running the business into the ground more than once.

SMART endured though, eventually becoming the largest independent agency across Australia and New Zealand. Our offices spanned Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland and Auckland. And our clients included adidas, Coca Cola, Ferrero, Levi's, McDonald's and Vodafone. The agency was recognised in numerous creative shows, along with Agency of the Year awards and business publications.

After a number of approaches from different agency groups, in 2011 I eventually sold the business to Interpublic Group (IPG). They merged us into McCann, in a reverse take-over that saw me become Chairman and CEO of McCann Australia and New Zealand, as well as Asia Pacific Creative Leadership Chair for McCann Worldgroup. After almost another decade of running McCann, which saw us become the world's most awarded agency in Australia, I finally decided I'd had enough of being a hands-on exec. So I quit to travel the world for a year with my wife Mish and the kids.

I soon started to miss my creative work at McCann though, as well as the challenges and fulfilment of owning my own creative business. So in one of those "what've I got to lose" moments, I went back to IPG in 2019 with an offer to acquire the Australian McCann operation. Which incredibly, they accepted. So now here I am, happy owner of both McCann Australia and my old agency SMART.

OK so here's the long version: After majoring at Melbourne Uni in Art History, Economics and Psychology, I kicked off my career as a creative in some great Australian agencies, including George Patterson Y&R, JWT and DDB. At least I thought they were great - the feeling wasn't always mutual though, and I lost my first couple of jobs pretty quickly. I guess I was ambitious and impatient and no doubt a real pain to manage. Funnily enough, my longest creative stint was at McCann, although I'd never have thought I'd end up running the place as Chairman and CEO a decade later (nor would my colleagues.)

It became clear I'd be better off working for myself. Even if I was only 28 and had zero business or management experience and zero money behind me. Ever the optimist though, in 2000 I teamed up with another Melbourne creative, the brilliant Paul Findlay, to relaunch his boutique design agency as our own creative shop: SMART. It was a small but well-established 5-person business that had been originally funded by Paul's mum, Ann, when he was a teen. So my very clever dad and lawyer, Bruce Lilley, came up with with a very clever vendor finance deal, which allowed me to buy out Ann's shares over time with the profits of the growing business. Fortunately for us all, SMART grew quickly and Ann was paid out in 2 years.

At SMART, I was finally able to take a more creative approach to my work - without getting fired. And I was able to run the agency as the kind of fun and relaxed place I always wished I'd been able to work in. And it worked. We started to win the kinds of creative brands I'd always dreamed of as clients: adidas, Coca Cola, Ferrero, Levi's, McDonald's, Vodafone. We also started to win local, then global creative, effectiveness and Agency of the Year awards. We were written up in the BRW Fast100 and B&T Employer of the Year. And we started to build a brilliant team of very smart people, who thrived in our fun agency culture.

Over the next decade, SMART went on to become Australia’s largest independent ad agency. AdNews called the business “one of the best known independent advertising success stories in Australia”. We opened offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland and Auckland. And we added added two more agency partners, creative John Mescall and planner Ash Farr - both agency professionals who, like me, were fired from their early multinational roles and wanted something more than just a job at a global agency (but who both ironically went on to huge global roles at McCann.)

One of the things I especially liked about having our own agency, was being able to take the types of creative risks with our SMART brand that I thought our clients should be taking with theirs. Having handed over the agency's creative reigns to John Mescall when he came on board, our brand comms were also one of my few remaining creative outlets. So I made the most of it.

I believed strongly (and still do) in leading by example, by building our own genuinely differentiated industry brand. We applied the same discipline and creativity to building our brand as we did to our clients' brands. From our weekly and irreverent AdNews column written by John, called 'SMARTARSE'. To regular stunts we'd pull to create brand awareness. One of our most infamous was our 'Dwarves' stunt, as best told by AdNews:

"Not enough agencies take an outside-the-box approach in trying to score a place on pitch lists so Smart's stunt on Thursday 22 April deserves a mention. Keen to get on the as-yet-undecided Peugeot shortlist, Smart deployed a troop of dwarves sporting t-shirts declaring 'We're small but we work hard'. The troop descended on Peugeot's headquarters for a day of fetching coffees and running errands. Peugeot has made it clear it's after a medium-sized Sydney agency and, despite a strong presence in Melbourne, Smart's fledgling Sydney operation does not meet the size requirements. As Smart partner Ben Lilley admits, the stunt will either be 'gloriously successful or kill any chance we have.'"

Well, it killed any chance we had. But as a PR stunt, it was a success in positioning SMART as an ambitious new creative player in Sydney. And we started getting invites to pitch for clients we hadn't even been able to get on the phone before.

As a young creative with no business training who'd somehow ended up as a CEO, SMART's rapid growth was a brutal crash-course for me in Business 101 (and there were more than a few crashes...) But it was my real-life MBA: Management By Accident. I had to learn fast, especially after a couple of 'near-death' experiences in our early years, caused by my clumsy business management. Over time though, I assembled some very smart advisors and mentors, along with a first-rate national management team, and the business took off.

When the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8 struck, it hit our industry hard. We stayed afloat though. And after the dust settled, we were able to start acquiring other independent agencies to merge into our operation, bolstering our national scale and talent ranks. These included creative boutique VCD/Kindred, retail specialist The Foundry, design agency Illuminati and Queensland specialists Turner Sands and Logan Meo Walters. We also launched a new branding agency, Hub Group, which Paul Findlay runs today as Brands To Life.

We'd also had a number of approaches from potential acquirers over the years. But were enjoying ourselves too much to seriously consider any offers. After the stresses of the GFC though, I found was I enjoying running the agency less and had become more interested in the creative challenges of our M&A work and corporate strategy. So when global agency McCann, owned by New York listed Interpublic Group (IPG), came knocking in 2010, I was ready to talk. It was a long talk, and a year (yes year!) of negotiations with McCann and IPG followed. Until finally in 2011, SMART was acquired by IPG and merged with the Australian operation of McCann, in a 'reverse-takeover' that saw me become Chairman and CEO of the merged operation.

McCann had not a great run over the previous few years. So just as we'd done at SMART, we used creativity to put the agency back on the map (only this time without the extreme PR stunts.) The thinking was simple: if we could reinvent McCann's reputation for creativity and effectiveness, to make it a magnet for great Australian talent and clients, the business success would follow. I also worked on innovating the McCann offering into a properly integrated agency model, by bolstering the agency's digital and social expertise and expanding into media planning and buying, as well as PR and design. We did this organically, by expanding our service offering to existing and new clients. And through more acquisitions, like The Red Republic PR and Woo Group design agencies.

Steadily over the next 7 years, we rebuilt McCann Australia, achieving record year-on-year growth and results along the way. We were named Agency of the Year at D&AD, London International, Spikes Asia, Campaign Asia, Campaign Brief, Mumbrella and AWARD. And after our creative success began to build, I was also appointed McCann Worldgroup Creative Leadership Chair for the Asia Pacific region, overseeing markets including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. This was all a fresh crash-course in multinational business management (and politics...) I enjoyed the steep learning curve though. And McCann went on to achieve its best ever creative and effectiveness results for both Australia and the APAC region.

In 2013, McCann Australia even made history as the world's most awarded agency in the The Gunn Report, Won Report and AdAge Awards Report, on the back of campaigns including the globally acclaimed Dumb Ways to Die, which we created and produced entirely out of our Melbourne office. This was largely thanks to the creative genius of John Mescall and my equally brilliant creative partner from my first stint at McCann, Pat Baron, who I brought back into McCann to partner with John. Our award-winning work even included the creation a new English word - 'phubbing' - for Macquarie Dictionary.

My McCann roles were creatively fulfilling. But over time it became clear once again that working for a large company - in fact, working for anyone - just wasn't for me. I missed the entrepreneurial freedom I'd enjoyed at SMART. It was time for a change. And for a proper break, after almost 20 years of running agencies. So I gave my notice to McCann and packed up with my wife Mish and the kids to take a year off traveling and living in Europe and the rest of the world. It wasn't long though before I started to miss both my creative work at McCann and the fulfilment of owning my own agency. So in one of those "what've I got to lose" kind of moments, I went back to IPG with an offer to acquire the Australian McCann operation. Which remarkably, they accepted.

Now here I am, happy owner of both McCann Australia and my old agency SMART. And happily able to take a more entrepreneurial approach once more to my business interests, as well as spending time on my broader business and community interests. Throughout my career, I've enjoyed being involved in a number of different business and community bodies. Including local industry and global groups like the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) and Young Presidents Organisation (YPO), which I'm still an active member of today. Plus community groups like Igniting Change, Jane Tewson's amazing Melbourne-based charity, as well as Richard Branson's Virgin Unite foundation. Richard himself has been a great source of inspiration. And I've been fortunate to gain some fantastic business and life lessons from my time at his home on Necker Island and his 'home away from home', Makepeace Island here in Australia.

Back when I was a bit more hands-on, I also sat on the board of the Advertising Federation of Australia and enjoyed being involved in business awards like the Cannes Lions, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, AdNews’ Top Forty Under Forty and CEO of the Year. And today I still travel extensively for YPO events and business and am always open to new entrepreneurial opportunities.