What your need to know:

• Former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Anthony Gregorio has reunited with Jen Davidson at consultancy Tumbleturn Marketing Advisory.
• Gregorio confirmed in January he would be leaving Saatchis. Since then he had been approached by others, including agencies, but sees greater upside on the outside.
• The addition of a creative agency heavyweight underlines Tumbleturn's expansion beyond media into broader marketing consultancy.
• Per Davidson services in most demand by CMOs are operational design overhauls – how they more effectively define outcomes and remits and manage agency rosters.
• When pitches are required, that ensures stronger results, said Davidson. But a pitch should be a last resort.

Bigger play

Former Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Anthony Gregorio has reunited with Jen Davidson, joining Tumbleturn as a partner as the marketing consultancy beefs-up its creative capability. The move has been some time in the making as Davidson, a former head of media at Commbank, builds a cross-discipline team focused on solving upstream structural challenges for brands and marketers facing massive increases in workload and often problematic operating models amid static resource.

Davidson has been expanding the consulting firm’s remit beyond media for some time, hence rebranding to Tumbleturn Marketing Advisory.

Gregorio adds decades of experience running some of Australia’s largest creative shops, including Saatchis for five years following eight years helming Havas’ creative agency operations.

He will work alongside and Tumbleturn partner Dan Johns, the former Havas Media, Mediabrands and Ikon boss, who joined earlier this year.

Davidson and Gregorio were previously colleagues at The Ball Partnership in the 1990s and have remained close. She said he will be walking in to a busy schedule.

“We're running a couple of creative pitches at the moment, and we've been doing that for a while. One area that I am seeing more and more is clients needing more guidance around how to dissect and properly understand a creative idea – an area Ant’s well-versed in.”

Tripling down

Gregorio stepped down from Saatchis in January. He said he’d been approached for “compelling” roles since then, including from agencies, but sees greater upside on the outside.

“You get to a certain point in this industry, particularly agency-side, where experience is not valued as highly as it should be,” he told Mi3. “I wanted to find a more sustainable option ... and it’s been interesting talking to clients without the spectre of trying to sell to them – there’s a different level of engagement.”

While the consulting market is becoming crowded, Gregorio believes Tumbleturn’s differentiator is depth of high-level experience, collaborative thinking and execution.

“It’s very rare that you get a combination of three partners with deep experience in media, marketing and creative actively working together on all of the client briefs,” he said. "We have one partner lead, but all will contribute to the problem-solving.”

Operational overhauls

Although Tumbleturn is heavily involved in running pitches, an increasing proportion of its work is upstream, helping marketers overhaul their operating models. That work carries through to reviews: Davidson told Mi3 in February that defining structures and outcomes before selecting agencies is now “potentially 40-50 per cent” of the entire pitch process.

Given larger brands now work with an average roster of six agencies, nailing down client-agency operational design is increasingly critical, per Davidson. Gregorio, with recent experience of working within those agency village structures, thinks the upfront work is fundamental given the remit-resource disconnect facing marketers.

“In part that's been driven because there's fewer people in organisations and way more channels, therefore greater complexity,” Gregorio said. “The smart clients have learnt that getting rid of your agency before getting your own house in order doesn't make sense.”  

Davidson added: “I think it's encouraging that clients are trying to find ways of working rather than just throwing their hands up in the air and going to pitch … a pitch is absolutely not the answer.”

That upstream work has led Tumbleturn into broader marketing advisory services.

Earlier this year Davidson formalised an alliance of specialists across marketing strategy, branding, agency village management, CX, sponsorship and DE&I in a bid to solve wider structural challenges facing CMOs.

While some service providers may feel threatened by that kind of line-up, Tumbleturn insisted the advisory in no way impinges agency remits – "we're not executional" – instead aiming to make marketers better clients to work with.

“It’s about making agencies’ lives easier by improving marketer capability so that they become more effective clients,” Dan Johns told Mi3 in May. “It’s not about implementation [i.e. providing overlapping services]. We’re strongly focused on the areas that will have major benefits for agencies – clearer briefs, improved working relations.”