Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and the Redefinition of the Ad Agency Business

Michael Farmer has been an independent "fly-on-the-wall" recorder of the dramatic transformation of Huge, IPG's Brooklyn-based, global digital creative operation. His new book describes the breathtaking pace of CEO Mat Baxter's first sixteen months on the job -- working with his 23-person top management team to transform the agency into a "growth acceleration company" for its clients -- and abandoning the "agency" label forever.

Madison Avenue Makeover chronicles Huge's change of mission, its new product strategy, its reorganization from twelve independent global offices to one single global operation, and its revolutionary three-dimensional pod organizational structure involving client partners, crafts and products.

Huge's transformation set out to correct the fatal deficiencies of the ad agency business: creative work that has little impact, declining prices and fees for agency services and commodity-like relationships that are unrewarding for clients and agencies alike.

The transformation is largely complete. What remains is to see how Huge performs in the marketplace with its new mission and products. All commercial signs are encouraging. The new products are selling well.

Baxter is Australian and only 44 years old, but he has a wealth of industry turnaround experience behind him. He learned the media business at Zenith in Australia, and he later became a co-founder of Naked Australia, CEO of UM Australia and the Global CEO of Initiative, IPG's media agency in the U.S.

Huge is Baxter's first creative agency gig. He was appointed by Philippe Krakowsky, IPG's CEO, to turn Huge around. Baxter left Initiative and joined Huge in June 2021.

During the past sixteen months, Huge's Executive Leadership Team (ELT) conducted three offsite retreats. The first retreat, in October 2021, created agreement on Huge's growth acceleration mission for clients. The second retreat, in May 2022, reviewed the progress of more than twenty related change projects led by ELT members. The third retreat, in October 2022, examined the functioning of the new organization and fine-tuned its operations.

Throughout, Huge benefited from the involvement of The Business Model Company (TBMC), a London-based specialized consulting firm that focuses on company transformations.

During 2022, ELT was running "old Huge" and setting the stage for "new Huge" -- delivering its budgeted numbers to IPG while beginning to sell its innovative approach and product lines to new customers.

The current organizational challenge is how to develop a new global company culture with employees who have been working remotely for more than two years and have expressed a desire to continue to work remotely.

Baxter and ELT understand that remote working is effective for certain types of work, like progress reviews and information exchanges, but strategic and creative thinking for clients require something more substantive, like face-to-face brainstorming meetings in physical locations. Huge sees itself as a "flexible workplace,">

Michael Farmer

Michael Farmer is the author of Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and the Redefinition of the Ad Agency Business, to be released in June 2023. He also wrote the award-winning Madison Avenue Manslaughter, an inside view of fee-cutting client… read more