Why After 25 Years, Ogilvy’s Luis Riva Is Both the Brake and the Accelerator

Luis Riva holds a job title paradox. As chief financial officer for Ogilvy’s CEE markets, he manages profit and loss (P&L). But as chief growth officer for Ogilvy Spain, he drives expansion. It is a rare mix of the brake and the accelerator.

Marking his 25th anniversary at the agency, the WPP Exco member speaks to LBB’s Alex Reeves about reconciling these instincts. From the culture shock of leaving the corporate world for the chaos of creativity, to the "resilience" of the Polish market, Luis explains why he isn’t a fan of "pure finance" and why AI demands a shift from selling hours to selling value.

LBB> Twenty-five years at one agency is a rarity, but your current dual role is even rarer. You are the CFO for CEE and the chief growth officer for Spain. Usually, finance is the brake and growth is the accelerator. How do you reconcile those two instincts in your daily decision-making?

Luis> Well, it is absolutely true. To be honest, and this is going to sound kind of strange, I’m not a super fan of pure finance. Since I joined Ogilvy 25 years ago, I was always keen to understand the business. So I've always run a kind of commercial finance role apart from the pure financial role. To be honest, what I like most, and the reason why I've been here for 25 years, is not the pure finance side of my role, but the operational role.

For me it was a natural step moving from pure finance, which I don't like, into this operational role and then finally onto the growth role. Which, I agree with you, may sound strange, but when you get to know me, I'm a very commercial guy. I love working with the teams, understanding everything which is connected to the business. It is a natural way of moving from one role into the other one.

If you ask me why 25 years, it is because I've never been in the same agency. I've been in many agencies within Ogilvy and many roles, and this is what I really like about it. Because I hate to get bored. By being abroad in the UK or now with my CEE role, working in France, I've always been involved in multinational multitasking projects. That has always thrilled me. So I don't feel like I've been in one single Ogilvy for 25 years.

LBB> 25 years ago when you got into Ogilvy, you joined from outside of advertising. What was the biggest culture shock being in this new space back then?

Luis> Wow. I always think that I was really shocked when I met the creatives. Which was not the first day, by the way. I was shocked because I came from a completely different environment – Hewlett-Packard, Philip Morris – nothing to do with the creative atmosphere. And I basically fell in love.

I have one great anecdote with the former CCO in the agency. 

I asked him, "What do you do?" 

And he said, "We make ideas." 

And I said, "Oh, that seems easy." 

He said, "OK, let's do a little test with you. Do you think you're creative?" 

I said, "Of course, I'm super creative." 

"What do you like a lot?"

I said, "I like cars."

"Which brand do you love?"

"I like Ferrari." 

So he gave me a blank sheet of paper and he said, "Imagine Ferrari is going to launch a new car. What would you do? How would you launch it? I'm going to give you one hour in my office. I'll come back in an hour and we'll see what you have written on that sheet." 

I was like, "OK, great, don't worry. I'll do a great launch."

After one hour he came back. It was still blank. I couldn't think of anything. Which was like, "Oh my god, this is not so simple, you know." That was my first shock. I really started to respect the creatives. Because at the first glance, you see people in shorts... like, "What is this guy doing?" And they do magic. They do magic.

Of course with the help of everyone else. I mean, creatives all by themselves without strategy, without a great account management team, etc., they would do nothing. But they are the heart and soul of the company.

LBB> There is an age-old tension between the creative department and the finance department. As someone who sits on WPP Exco, what is the one thing you wish creative directors understood about P&L, and what is the one thing finance directors need to understand about the creative process?

Luis> I think that this tension is good, as long as it is honest and transparent. There always has to be a yin to have a yang. I think that tension is great, as long as there is respect and understanding of each other’s role.

Creatives need to challenge business people and to try to sell what they believe is best for clients. But at the same time I think that business people need to tell creatives about their clients and their business needs. And they need to come to a kind of agreement. As long as that agreement is good for everyone, that's where the magic comes from. We need to keep that tension, as long as there is respect, honesty, and transparency. That tension is absolutely gorgeous. It is what makes an agency different from any other business.

It's not something against the other. A little bit of push back is great. Because when you are challenged you are forced to think more and deeper, so you get better ideas. If you're never challenged, you get what it is, which is average. So this kind of tension makes everyone get the best from each other.

LBB> And let's just look back at those 25 years so far. What have been the biggest moments where things have really changed and gone into a new era in your career and also in Ogilvy? What stands out?

Luis> I think there were probably three things that are key right now, thinking about it from this 25-years perspective. 

One was the internet coming in, back in the early 2000s. Because that completely changed the model and the way especially the traditional creatives used to work. That was a huge change. What we used to call the below-the-line activities, with digital, came in very fast. The agencies needed to have a big transformation.

Second was 2008, with the big worldwide [economic] crisis. Where agencies started to feel the pain. In the '80s, the '90s, and early ‘00s, the agencies were on top of the game, with huge profits. Everything was kind of easy. Since 2008, 2009, marketing budgets started to fall. Procurement from clients started to step in and put much more pressure on agencies. I think that that also changed the game and agencies had to re-adapt themselves and to think smarter, to really think about client needs, not so much about themselves as they had been.

And then the third big change, which we yet haven't seen totally, is AI. Which is going to affect this industry a lot.

LBB> You've stayed in this one brand in Ogilvy for this whole time but it's obviously evolved. Have you got a sense of what Ogilvy has always represented within the market and how that's been tweaked over the years?

Luis> Absolutely. I must say that I'm a David Ogilvy fan. I think his values are still predominant. I really believe that Ogilvy is still successful because we acted the way David Ogilvy did. I think it's about people. He always said "hire giants". Another famous one is "pay peanuts you get monkeys". I think it is still valid.

When I started 25 years ago, we were already part of WPP. But WPP was more a financial holding, so they were not really into the business. Just a little bit of reporting, treasuries, finance, etc. They were not doing anything on the business side. After 25 years WPP has moved from a pure holding perspective to more operational, so we have many more bonds within WPP. Which is not bad, but it changes how Ogilvy was working with a bit more autonomy. Now we have less autonomy. At the same time we have more opportunities because we can work with WPP Media or WPP Production, etc.

The Ogilvy values are still valid. When I talk to my WPP peers, most of them envy those values. Because they are foundational, and they're still there. Within WPP, Ogilvy still remains. Young & Rubicam was lost. J. Walter Thompson, an amazing agency brand, and Wunderman. Ogilvy still stands. And I think that one of the reasons is because of these David-Ogilvy values that he brought in.

LBB> Let's fast forward to today. You have really interesting different facets to your role in having this international CEE perspective. As a region, what are your main preoccupations and what are you most excited about?

Luis> In the CEE region, I think the word that I use most is resilience. We cannot forget that there is a war out there. Ukraine is close to the Polish border, close to Czech, to Romania. And I think that the rest of Europe has slightly forgotten about it, but it is very present when you go to these countries. They are suffering from this political issue, especially Poland. 

They are resilient because they have been able to work and develop themselves under these terrible circumstances. It's much worse having a war than a macro recession. Macro recession everyone has suffered. A war very close to your borders, not everyone has suffered, thank God. 

The other key reference is enthusiasm. They keep loving their business. They keep fighting for every penny. They keep fighting for any small project that may come in from a client. That is so valuable. And this is not just Ogilvy, but also Hogarth and VML. So WPP in the CEE region is very solid.

And they're still very hard workers. 

Resilience, enthusiasm and hard work – the three make it a successful project there.

LBB> There's this huge reassessment of value in the creative industries as a result of AI. As someone who's concerned with the financial business side of a creative industry, pricing creativity is a difficult challenge. What guides you through those kinds of conversations?

Luis> AI is a challenge and opportunity. I think it is probably the best opportunity to start selling value. Everybody talks about value. The problem is how do you put a dollar sign on that value? How do you price it?

I think we need to run away from the traditional FTE [full time equivalent] based pricing models. Because AI is going to replace some of those FTEs. I'm not saying those jobs are going to be lost. I think we need different types of people. And I think that more than ever, clients need agencies with brains. David Ogilvy called it "gentlemen with brains". And I think we need brains more than ever.

AI is great in the sense that you get a lot of information, you can get great summaries of briefings and you can do a lot of things with that. But you need a human to understand what AI is bringing you. And by the way, AI brings that regardless of if you are Dentsu or Omnicom, it doesn't matter. It's the same thing for everyone. So if you have to differentiate yourself, it's through the human brain.

So I think that the future means probably smaller agencies in terms of FTE, with more senior people, better paid, and charging value to their clients. It's a great opportunity for the industry. I think clients will get better insights, better assets from the agencies. And not necessarily pay less, they will get more value for the same price.

I think that this is what the challenge [is], and I think our responsibility as leaders in the industry is to go to clients and explain this new model is also good for them. It's not about them saving 10% of their marketing budget. It's about using that marketing budget to get better results for themselves. And it's about value. And it's about people. For me, AI is a fantastic tool, but it is only a tool.

LBB> Are there any particular client relationships or particular campaigns or things that Ogilvy Spain or CEE have created that you think are really testament to the direction that you're traveling in right now?

Luis> In Ogilvy Spain, what we have been doing over the last six months is taking our biggest clients and some of our biggest prospects, and hosting workshops on how technology, and AI is included in technology, can help their businesses.

So we're taking a holistic view and saying, "We can use that technology, always from an agency perspective. We are not McKinsey, we are not Deloitte. But we can get all this technology, put it in your favour, and surround it with great marketing expertise, and we're going to focus on your business issues."

We have done four or five workshops already. And they have been amazing because clients didn't know that Ogilvy was such an expert on technology and we had so many experts in the team that could run technology. And we are doing some very nice projects with those clients. And with the prospects, they are realising that Ogilvy is not only about creativity, but is about many more things. So we are taking a proactive approach. And that's my CFO role – explaining that we're working with technology, with AI on a daily basis at the agency internally and we are putting on the table a lot of things that our clients could use. These workshops are going well and it's very motivational. They are seeing a different kind of Ogilvy.

LBB> Anything else you’d like to add that you’ve learnt from 25 years at Ogilvy?

Luis> I think one word which is key in the industry is talent. As long as we can attract the talent, we will be fine. If we don't have the talent, we will become a machine and clients will not value what we do for them. So I think that any agency that wants to be ahead of the game needs to be able to attract and retain that talent. Without it, it doesn't matter if you have AI, tools, whatever. You will not be different from others.

And more than ever, and this is what David Ogilvy said, the best asset in the agency is the one that walks in the door every single day. I am a fan of those words because it's the truth. The more talent you can attract and retain, the better the work you will do for your clients and the clients will be happier. It's really about people.