BMF Expands to Melbourne as Scott Nowell Brings “Extra Injection” of Ambition

​BMF is building a Melbourne business to service Asahi and hunt for new business and talent, LBB can reveal, 12 years after it was last in the market and six months after the highly-respected Scott Nowell joined its leadership ranks.

In his first interview since heading back into agencyland -- in April, LBB revealed BMF had hired The Monkeys' co-founder as creative chair -- Scott confirmed the Melbourne arm has “got to be a serious business in its own right. It can't just be a satellite. So it's going to be its own business, a growing business.”

He was joined by CEO Stephen McArdle, who was just a couple of years into his 15-year-long BMF tenure when the agency was last in Melbourne. Now, he’s hunting for office space, and plotting proximity to clients like Asahi and Tennis Australia.

“I've wanted to go back into the Melbourne market because of great talent, great clients there, great creative culture,” Stephen said.

He has been contemplating another crack for “a couple of years”; the Asahi pitch cemented the timing. “That was definitely part of our chat with them, which was, yes we're going to be back here and we'll help build that team out around your needs,” Stephen said.

“It's a real part of the growth plan. Getting in on that market and expanding out is going to be great and [offer up] more great opportunities with a different set of clients.”

Scott pointed to the calibre of talent he wants to tap into. “It is a bit of a 'watch this space' in terms of how we're going to build that, but there's some pretty exciting people [in Melbourne] and I always like the idea of being able to have these opportunities to work with people that you've always admired.”

Melbourne has its own creative culture, a slew of storied agencies, and a batch of newly-launched indies -- like Kerfuffle, which shares the Asahi account with BMF, and was founded by a trio of Scott’s The Monkeys colleagues. Stephen noted the pair of agencies have “massive respect and also genuine affection” for each other, but most importantly are aligned on doing “the best thing by the client”.

Scott began working with BMF on an array of projects following the departure of former CCO Stephen de Wolf, who returned to Clemenger BBDO last year. BMF and The Monkeys were fierce, respectful competitors when Scott still worked at the latter (he left in 2023, six years after selling the business to Accenture, and a year before it was rebadged to Droga5), and he is close friends with BMF co-founder Warren Brown, with whom he runs AWARD’s Creative Leadership program.

In Stephen’s hunt for a chief creative, he spoke with Warren “about brilliant people. Scott's name came up, and I said, 'You know, I'd love to see him again, just see what he's up to and have a chat.’” 

After a few years off the tools -- “I really needed to step away and pay my family back a little bit of time” -- Scott was ready to dive back into agency leadership. He was drawn to BMF’s reputation as the ‘home of the long idea’, and the progression to permanent creative chair was organic.

“The industry is going through a lot of flux and questioning itself, but this was a group of people who were incredibly talented, incredibly hard working and probably deserve more recognition in the industry than what they were getting at that time,” Scott said.

“People at BMF are here for the right reasons. They're working for the client and doing everything in their power … to make their client's business perform better. There's a lot of noise around personal fame and what work you've done, but really, if you want a good, consistent business long term, you've got to do the right thing by the client.”

Scott has brought gravitas to pitch rooms and confidence to clients, Stephen said. And while, often, an agency has to rebuild pitch fitness after a leadership shake-up, the agency has won Asahi, Superloop, and Ring in quick succession.

“Scott's impact was immediate,” Stephen confirmed. “It's been phenomenal.

“Deep in pitching, working on all the big stuff, making the work better, and really helping us with fulfilling a bit more of BMF's potential.”

In addition to Scott’s appointment and its run of new business success, BMF won its first-ever APAC Grand Effie this year, is the reigning Effective Agency of the Year, and posted record EBITDA for the financial year.

But “it has not been an easy year”, Stephen acknowledged. Westpac and the agency had a messy split, and a global pitch process continues for long-term client ALDI.

“It's definitely been a year of contrast,” the CEO said. “Some clients have left us, which is unusual and never pleasant. So having to deal with natural consequences that come with those things has been tough on BMF.

“It's a sort of 'curate's egg' [a British idiom describing something both good and bad], isn't it? It's this business, it's this industry, there are always challenges waiting around the corner. My favourite saying, which Christina [Aventi, CSO] quotes back at me, is, 'Triumph and disaster. Treat those two imposters just the same and you'll remain on an even keel'. That is absolutely true and it's probably been one of those years that's tested out that theory more than most.”

Navigating turbulent times requires doubling down on "the number one brand-building tool of all time", Scott said: consistency. And "doing the simple things well is the hardest and requires the most discipline."

As AI threatens a “cavalcade of ordinary” and accelerates homogenisation, brands must establish or retain a point of view to come out ahead, he argued.

“That's what I'd be looking for if I was a client: somebody who's going to keep me ahead.

“Great agencies are really good at giving their clients and brands a distinctive place in the world."

BMF’s job, then, is to itself remain distinctive, consistent, and effective. Stephen added, “We're not reinventing, we're not changing the positioning, we're not changing the values, but we are putting an extra injection into the machine and the ambition for what BMF could be.”