Dentsu Creative Eyes Global Growth With the Elevation of Abbey Klaassen and Phil Gaughran

Dentsu Creative’s U.S. CEO Abbey Klaassen and Phil Gaughran, who leads global business strategy for Dentsu Creative and Dentsu Americas, are expanding their roles in the interest of creating a cohesive global brand.

They aim to grow Dentsu Creative’s international creative products and offerings and attract more business, amid a recent winning streak that includes the Lowe’s and T-Mobile creative accounts.

Klaassen will retain her current role, while also assuming a global brand president title. Gaughran will take on a new title, as president of Dentsu’s global creative product, growth and strategy. Klaassen’s role involves fostering relationships with an increasingly global client roster. She is also building a consistent standard and plans to showcase that a more streamlined, globally scaled agency can still connect with target audiences at a local level.

The leaders will closely collaborate with Yasu Sasaki, the holding company’s global chief creative officer and creative practice lead, and both will undertake increasingly global purviews. In their expanded roles, both executives will work together to streamline global branding and scale service offerings and strategies that historically varied based on geographic market.

Gaughran will oversee business growth and product offerings, and also lead the holding company’s branding and positioning. He plans to scale data, tech and AI adoption across Dentsu Creative by deepening the agency’s integration with its production company, Tag Worldwide, which it acquired last summer.

After consolidating the holding company’s creative agencies in 2022 to create Dentsu Creative, the company went through a series of leadership changes and strategic pivots. Klaassen assumed the chief executive role last November, replacing the agency’s former CEO Paul Fogaca.

Now moving “beyond” its transformation in the U.S., Dentsu Creative’s leaders told ADWEEK they’re turning their attention to international markets with an aim to create consistent experiences for Dentsu clients around the world. Dentsu Creative’s recent big-budget wins in the U.S. market follow a period of change that saw agency brands including McGarryBowen and 360i absorbed by the overarching Dentsu Creative brand.

The recent wins suggest the holding company’s new approach is gleaning some results, and its leaders are keen on driving more.

“Marketing organizations aren’t necessarily growing, which means they need more simple agency relationships. They don’t have time to manage 12 different partners,” Klaassen said of the previous consolidation, and the agency’s single P&L structure.

Building a cohesive, globally scaled Dentsu Creative

Recently, Dentsu Creative unveiled its new “Transformative Creativity” tagline. The messaging refers to Dentsu Creative’s 2022 launch, and how combining creative agencies led to greater market impact.

“The transformational part is not just stopping at the brief as it is, but fundamentally looking to solve business problems through myriad means, using end-to-end creativity,” Gaughran said.

For years, he championed the holding company’s One Dentsu vision, having previously led strategy at McGarryBowen. Eventually, he began working on corporate strategy initiatives that allowed him to play a key role in planning Dentsu Creative’s consolidation. He ensured the consolidated agency’s capabilities could meet its clients’ needs and that its work met a quality standard.

“When we see our creative practice now, that’s encompassing Dentsu Creative as a brand, Tag as our scaled production partner that we’ve been integrating over the last year, and then the bringing together of Dentsu Japan into the creative fold as well. It’s the embodiment of all three,” Gaughran told ADWEEK.

Creating an architecture for global integration will be a key part of Gaughran’s new role—an effort the leaders hope will spur further new business growth.

“When we say growth, we’re talking about really new logo growth, primarily … making sure that we meet the need for increasingly global clients that we’re adding into the family, and making sure that we’re consistent around the world,” he said.