IndustryLeaderoftheYear

INDUSTRY LEADER OF THE YEAR: Pete Khoury

Leading his team of ‘p i ra te s’into the wild seas every day

his year’s AdFocus Industry

TLeader of the Year is chief creative officer of TBWA Hunt Lascaris, Peter Khoury, a man who has played a leading role in delivering growth to his clients’bottom line while accumulating more than 200 awards at international and local award shows.

He ’s the chair of the Creative Circle and sits on the Facebook Creative Council for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region as well as the Loeries board.

Khoury was a unanimous decision as this year’s industry leaders, standing out as a result of his steady consistency despite operating in a highly pressured and often egotistical environment. The judges agreed that —ev e n observed from a distance —it ’s clear that Khoury is a chief creative officer that really cares about his team and nurtures them to their full potential.

He is one of the few creative directors with the ability to grow and elevate others while maintaining his own grounded and humble attitude —all the while being utterly brilliant at what he does. A man without airs and graces, he is universally admired in the industry and as such, a worthy recipient of the title Industry Leader of the Year.

His journey into advertising was by no means a foregone conclusion. When he was 15 years old, Khoury went to Video Lab to see what they do there as he loved animation and was keen to pursue it as a career.

He was advised to study at the AAA School of Advertising when he left school. His mind was made up when AAA came to his school to show the students what it did, including a stop-frame animation that a AAA student had done for Coca-Cola. He was sold, only realising when he eventually got to AAA that the course was more about the curation of ideas than animation. Fortunately, he loved it.

He quickly realised that if the idea was lacking, no matter what you did, it would only be as good as the idea. “I wasn’t interested in executing other people’s shit ideas as an animator so I doubled down on advertising,”he recalls. “This is the same reason that I’ve never moved into film directing —I’m not interested in executing somebody else’s mediocre ideas.”

As a leader he believes in practicing what he preaches and leading by example. He says it ’s important to create an environment where everyone has a voice and is equal before the idea, while making an extra effort to ensure the introverts speak up —because often their ideas bring balance to the room.

Good leaders, he says, take the time to teach and share their knowledge and secrets, to help those who work under them become better than they themselves are.

Khoury is renowned for rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck in. “As a leader I have found that the more you know the details of what it takes to pull something off, the more specific you can be when briefing, questioning, presenting and explaining. This knowledge comes from a consistent attitude, over many years, of wanting to learn all the rules so I could break them. I used to get frustrated when people gave me technical reasons for not being able to do something. I didn’t like not knowing the details of these reasons because I wanted to challenge them.”

As a young creative he soon realised that creative directors gave more guidance to either the art director or copy writer depending on what there were by trade. “I realised I never wanted to be that kind of creative director. Instead, I wanted to be able to give anyone I oversaw the best in-depth feedback and direction in their specific area of responsibility. To do that meant that I had to learn and master everything in the process so that I always had a practical and informed point of view.”

That meant that in addition to learning to art direct, he also learned how to write radio ads and headlines, edit, animate, direct, illustrate,

Pete Khoury: Good leaders take the time to teach and share their knowledge and secrets

Pete Khoury accepting a Loeries Grand Prix awarded to TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris

design and sell ideas. At the same time he learned to overcome his introverted nature.

“I kept learning and trying things out so I could better explain myself, ask better questions and direct people in a specific way,” he says. This was what has allowed him to delve into the deep craft of something while pushing the limits of what’s possible to deliver iconic, distinctive and memorable work.

When it comes to creative leadership, you have got to know your stuff, he says. “Bu s k i ng just isn’t going to cut it —at least not in a high-performance company. If you want to keep A players around they need to be fulfilled, which means you have to operate at their level and beyond, nurturing an environment that encourages debate and rewards commitment and excellence —where they can see you nipping, tucking, crafting, simplifying and taking the time to lay down the breadcrumbs so you can sell and defend their great work.”

As to where the industry is going, he maintains that while tech will lead the way, great storytelling will seal the deal. “Our clients pay us for what they need now but our future revenue lies in what they are not yet asking us for, and we need to lead the way or we’ll be relegated down the food chain.”

The advertising industry continues to face numerous dilemmas, or tension points, where success boils down to the industry’s attitude towards those tensions: procurement vs free engagement, sea of sameness vs originality, growth vs money, fake vs true, addiction vs expression, people vs brands, privacy vs access, now vs next, and reset vs innovate. “Inside these tensions are a wealth of great answers —but only if we are asking great q u e s t io n s ,”says Khoury.

Making diversity work —in terms of culture, tech and expression —is going to be a challenge, he says, despite the fact that as a country we’ve been doing it for a lot longer than most. Ultimately, however, the industry will overcome its challengesby leveraging its greatest strength: lateral thinking.

What inspires him, he says, is bravery; bravery which doesn’t just have a time and a place but is rather a way of being, and people who see their own self worth as their power.

“I love misfits, people who make it big and s ho u ld n ’t have, with all the chips stacked against them. They proved the world wrong.”

He admires people such as Stanley Kubrick. “Not only did he speak through his work, he simultaneously created a foundation w he r e film making and artistic expression could go. Kubrick embodied what it means to be a creative; through his dark and witty depictions and sometimes complex subject matter, he created the unseen by tapping into the u nt o u c he d .”

He relates the story of two competitive fashion houses: Christian Dior was a creative director with a great eye, sense of style and an intuitive feeling for what would resonate. At his disposal he had a studio of people producing beautiful things at scale. Then there was Cristobal Balenciaga, a master craftsman, with a reputation as a couturier of uncompromising standards, who was even referred to as “t he master of us all”by Christian Dior.

“I admire them both, but I admire them as one entity, Christian Balenciaga or Cristobal Dior, either works. Success in a creative company today is about finding a balance between both these approaches. The ability to scale, creating compelling, resonant work fast, but also the ability to offer deep craft and specialisation in certain areas, keeping you ahead of the competition and trends. Both these areas of delivery need to be world-class,” he says.

While Khoury is motivated by creating work that gains respect and recognition around the world, what he is most proud of are those instances where his work has had an impact on society and its mindsets or beliefs.

He refers here in particular to the Sasol campaign, which introduced the world to the possibility of a milk bottle that turns green when the milk is off; Joe, the volunteer coach of the SA Olympic team who had more passion than ability; MTN Clap; the Ayoba 2010 World Cup campaign; a Braille burger that allowed blind people to see their food for the first time; and breaking ballet stereotypes by creating a series of bite-sized ballets straight from trending stories and serving them back into c u lt u r e .

He ’s also proud of his role in helping start hot shop MetropolitanRepublic, an agency that for a time took on and outperformed the Goliaths of the industry, as well as what he has achieved at TBWA\Hunt Lascaris over the last five and a bit years. The latter was rated overall Regional Agency of the Year at Loeries in 2018 and 2019, and second EMEA Regional Agency of the Decade at Cannes Lion in 2020.

Like many great leaders, he refuses take all the credit. “I am most proud of all the TBWA pirates that made this happen. Together we go into the wild seas every day. Sometimes we get beaten and tossed aside. But we get up and do it again. It didn’t come easy, nor will it get any easier. But we’re a great collective of people, so I know we will keep bringing our best every day.”

He ’s looking forward to watching the protégés that served under him rising into ever more influential positions within the next decade or two. “Who knows, I may even be working for one of them by then,”he says.

As for life post advertising? Well, that will see him reigniting Zero One One, a lifestyle brand that he co-owns and started in 1999. Yo u ’re likely to find him in his workshop creating limited editions and one-off beautifully crafted bespoke pieces that people will pay him a lot of money to acquire. But t h at ’s a long way in the future.