Wunderman Thompson strives to be not just an agency but a growth partner – part agency, part consultancy, and part technology company. The group focuses on delivering solutions that go beyond marketing and advertising into strategic design, business understanding, and digital transformation. Leading from its Colombia office as the CFO, of Colombia & Central America at Wunderman Thompson is Agustín Correa.
A Transformational Leader
Agustín’s joined Wunderman Thompson (WT) in 2018. His role was to restructure and transform the company from a traditional creative agency to a consultancy firm, by leading cultural transformation and creating their vision for the business – while at the same time, all efforts were invested in building this vision through talent acquisition and developing their people’s skills. By now, Colombia has become one of the most recognized businesses within the network in terms of innovation and marketing technology – all of this as a result of strategy execution through their ambitious plan of bringing the best talent to generate growth in our clients.
Through developed vision and strategy, Agustín’s objective in the execution was to divest on complex stakeholder, management, and legal entities structures and to put efforts into one unique vision driven by the investment (and development) on talent with martech capabilities, with creativity as the foundation of all of their solutions.
The result of this was a more diverse, agile, and simple business. In numbers, WT improved in 2019 by 19+ points percent of its Profit Margin and speeded up its cash generation dramatically by building new internal (SOX compliant) processes and more valuable relationships with its clients – that also brought, as a result, big improvements in their Net Sales.
“Our north has always been to invest in our talent, martech capabilities, and more profitable business units, and we developed creative approaches that allowed us to reduce our operating costs by 1.4 million dollars a year since 2019, also with strong taxation and administrative less expensive structure. At this moment, we are globally one of the most growing and profitable markets, hopefully, admired by the kind of solutions we export to the world. Innovation guides our services within the idea to bring into life solutions that solve human problems, to promote a better world through sustainability while also making our clients grow,” shares Agustín.
A Perfectionist
Within his career, Agustín has had the opportunity to be exposed to progressive experiences within finance and business roles. He got to work in different industries in Latin America while leading international global and regional roles in Europe which allowed him to visit and work with many people and countries in the world, from diverse backgrounds and cultures. He started his career in Argentina 18+ years ago in the retail industry (1 year), moved into advertising services (5+ years), and finally, before getting back to WPP, moved into the sporting goods industry (7 years).
He chose the current industry since the idea to return to a company with great leaders with the ones he could continue developing his growth and career looked promising. But secondly, because of a clear idea of transformation that he started building since the interview process started and has been modeling during the last 5 years as the way to evolve and improve every day our business performance and clients’ satisfaction.
Though Agustín is a perfectionist, he still is able to understand that sometimes perfectionism cannot be the first goal but the evolution to something better every time. He is a hard worker but respectful of work-life balance. “I still believe that dedication is the clue to moving forward. I always am in search of a solution rather than dedicating time to a problem itself,” says Agustín.
As a leader, Agustín does his part in promoting DEI by showing interest, and curiosity but also humility on diversity and inclusion. He likes to be part of this agenda since it allows him to understand other perspectives that could enrich his own paradigm. While at the same time makes him understand and treat others in the way they want and deserve.
Learning from Challenges
Agustín’s biggest challenge came in 2018 when he was hired to transform business in Colombia. The situation was really hard. Clients were not happy. There was not a unique and clear vision of where the team was going. Talent was frustrated. Company oversized. There was not enough cash to operate. And if not enough, there was no credibility from the group on strategy and execution.
The solution was in two ways: doing a big restructuring to keep a simpler, healthier, and light structure; and, secondly, hiring the right talent to ensure improvements in services to our existing clients. At the same time, being able to conduct one unique vision of the company, improve commercial terms with (now) happy customers, and invest in the development of clients and capabilities.
We asked for his views on the impact of the recent FTX and then the SVB scenario, which is a global challenge considering the effect on the credibility of fintech. Agustín believes this is the first time private financial firms are feeling their obligation of taking consciousness rather than being a responsibility from the government itself. As a result, banks will need to show to the world that they have enough liquidity to respond to investors if they want to retire their funds, generating bigger reserves on banks (meaning less money in the market) – which is going to affect interest rates at first, being the potential result a deceleration in the inflation and consumption.”
Words of Wisdom
To the young budding entrepreneurs, Agustín says:
“Believe in the power of leadership, behaviors, and culture to drive strategy. You can be the best technical resource of the company but without the best talent on your side, you won’t be able to show and implement all of your capabilities at the speed that the current changing environment requires. Keep humble and flexible to new different approaches.”
Quote: “I live by the idea of experiences in life, for me and my family. I really enjoy traveling, moving through this international career that gives me the opportunity to obtain the best things of each nation and culture.”
