When Clare Pickens Taking the reins at Leo Burnett Australia this year, she brings with her a wealth of experience, a fresh perspective and a clear mission: to reignite the agency’s creative fire and elevate its work to new heights. Fresh from Amsterdam, where she spent 15 years leading creative teams at agencies including Wieden+Kennedy and independent HERC, Pickens says she’s not just settling into a new role: she’s preparing to “lead one of Australia’s most prestigious creative agencies into the future.”
Pickens’ arrival ended a 10-month period without a CEO at Leo Burnett. Despite that, she found a team that remained resilient and focused. “It felt like I joined a really capable, stable team, and they did a fantastic job of maintaining relationships and delivering work during that time,” she says.
But for Pickens, the status quo isn’t the goal; innovation is. Her goal is to push the agency to innovate beyond its legacy and leverage its human-centric heritage to remain competitive in a market where consolidation is becoming the norm. “The landscape is changing locally and globally,” she acknowledges, but she believes Publicis Groupe is well-positioned to thrive in this new environment.
From global vision to local precision
Pickens’ trip to Australia is more than just a geographic shift; it’s a pivot from global campaigns to the nuanced world of work in the local market.
During her ten years at Wieden+Kennedy, including a stint in London, she led global and regional brands across a range of categories, driving campaigns for giants such as Instagram, Milka (Mondelez), Netflix and P&G. With a knack for discovering unexpected business solutions, Pickens aims to combine business strategy with creative genius, ensuring that work is not only effective but enjoyable. As she says, “What helps people helps businesses. Creativity is about solving business problems in the most interesting, dynamic and memorable ways. That’s how we make breakthroughs.”
Pickens doesn’t view marketing as a siloed function within brand leadership. Instead, she believes it needs to be at the table and demonstrate how it’s meeting key business objectives. Without that alignment, she says, marketing efforts can’t effectively address big challenges at the leadership level.
In Europe, Pickens was accustomed to designing campaigns that needed to resonate across diverse markets, each with their own cultural and consumer nuances. “Everywhere I’ve worked, diversity of opinion has been essential to creating quality creative work that is not only unique but different,” she says. However, working globally or across multiple markets often requires condensing diverse consumer insights into a single, overarching concept, sometimes at the expense of specific local relevance.
Today, in Australia, Pickens operates in a very different creative landscape. The market is smaller, but she sees that as an opportunity, not a limitation. “At a local level, the ideas are stronger and more focused, which allows for bolder work,” she notes. Pickens points to the success of campaigns like the “Bundy Wedding” for Bundaberg Rum, for example. (see below) highlighting the kind of bold, culturally relevant work that can only be achieved when the creative process is deeply rooted in local knowledge.
This shift from a global to a local approach is not just a change in scale, it’s also a change in creative philosophy. In Australia, Pickens is keen to explore the potential of more “grounded” ideas – concepts that are deeply embedded in the specific cultural and social fabric of the market. This approach allows for more flexibility and responsiveness, she says, allowing the agency to create work that not only resonates, but is also challenging and exciting.
“I like what (Leo Burnett) has been able to do with SunCorp Insurance (referring to the work of the Cannes Award-winning Resilience Platform) where we position insurance against resilience and protection rather than recovery. We’ve evolved an entire category to a completely different perspective on what our role is for people,” she says.
The Australian market: a laboratory for innovation?
Pickens is set to leverage her international experience to push the boundaries of creativity in a market known for its distinctive and bold voice. And the timing couldn’t be better, with Australia winning the most Cannes Lions in the APAC region in both awards. 2023 And 2024.
It is also a unique market, characterised by its cultural diversity, irreverent humour in advertising and a willingness to take risks. Although smaller on the world stage, it is a market with unparalleled creativity. Pickens recognises this and sees Australia as a breeding ground for innovation.
AI may be a hot topic, but Pickens remains cautious. “Not everyone is using AI responsibly and wisely because it’s a new tool and we all want to experiment with it,” she adds. She says Publicis is “ahead of its time” in adopting AI and the Groupe’s Marcel platform, which launched in 2017, but doesn’t get into specifics about implementation or innovation underway.
At Leo Burnett, Pickens says, the focus is on mastering the technology before integrating it into client work. This measured approach reflects industry trends toward more ethical and informed use of AI, a theme that also resonated at Cannes Lions.
Despite all the buzz, Pickens believes the real change won’t happen at the product level. In fact, when AI becomes part of the “experience layer” and brands’ offerings can be personalized and transformed for consumers, she believes that development “will be more profound.”
Absurdism, cultural fluidity and the power of a light touch
Guiding Leo Burnett into a new era means staying in tune with the region’s creative pulse. This year at Cannes, humor, absurdity, cultural fluidity, and artificial intelligence took center stage, and Pickens sees them as essential tools for pushing the boundaries of creativity.
“I’m a big fan of humor, especially in tough times when people need a laugh,” she says. “Creativity that injects humor stands out and breaks through. Creatives sometimes forget that you don’t always have to hold a mirror up to the consumer; sometimes creativity is about telling universal stories that connect, much like Pixar and Disney do with their animated stories.”
His perspective is in keeping with the irreverence and spirit of Cannes. The introduction of the new comedy category at the Lions this year saw 798 entries, proving that the power of a well-placed joke resonates with brands and consumers alike. Comedy has made a well-deserved comeback, resulting in some remarkable works that have been noticed, according to the Lions Trends Report3.6% of applications in this new category were winners, exceeding the global average of 3.1%.
Absurdity was another prominent theme at Cannes. This year, it became increasingly clear that confusion can have enormous value. In a world overwhelmed by content, “weird” is sometimes the only way to grab attention. Take the work of Dramamine, for example. The anti-nausea brand paid homage to the barf bag with “The Last Barf Bag,” a campaign so bizarre it won the Lions Grand Prix for Health and Wellness.
“Absurdity, when used well, can be incredibly effective in making a brand memorable,” Pickens says. “Absurdity works because it taps into something deeper, something unexpected. It disrupts the norm and forces people to pay attention.”
Cultural fluidity is another driver of today’s creative landscape. Asia, with its 51 countries and more than 2,300 languages, presents a complex cultural mosaic. And while Australia is a single market, like Asia, it is not monolithic and navigating this cultural mosaic requires both caution and creativity. For Pickens, Australia’s multicultural richness is not just a challenge, but an asset.
“Everywhere I’ve worked, diversity of opinion has been crucial,” she says. “Whether it’s diversity in education, socioeconomics, or ethnicity, it’s essential to be surrounded by people who are different from you and who have strong, distinct voices. That’s where healthy creative friction happens, which elevates the work. When you bring 10 people from 10 different backgrounds together to debate and agree, the result is always better.”
In Australia, almost half of the Australian population was born overseas or has at least one parent born overseas, according to the Local Statistics OfficeThis diversity is reflected in consumer behavior, making it essential for brands to understand and respond to a wide range of cultural perspectives.
“It’s in forcing yourself to really understand diversity beyond the checkboxes that the real magic happens,” Pickens concludes.
Beyond the rewards, real-world impact
At the heart of Pickens’ vision for Leo Burnett Australia is a commitment to creative excellence, not just in terms of awards, but also in creating work that has a tangible impact on people’s lives. “For me, creativity is about solving business problems in the most interesting, dynamic and memorable way,” she explains. This philosophy is evident in the agency’s work with Suncorp, particularly in the collaboration with Suncorp. “One house to save many” campaign (see below)which redefined the insurance category by shifting the focus from recovery to resilience.
The campaign, which has won multiple awards, including a Grand Prix de l’Innovation at Cannes in 2022, is a perfect example of what Pickens sees as the future of creative work. It’s not just about being clever or flashy, but about making a real difference. “That’s what excites me about creativity: doing something that closely addresses a human problem and a business problem with a really exciting creative solution,” she says.
In an industry often obsessed with awards, Pickens’s focus on efficiency is refreshing. She appreciates rewards, but only when they reflect tangible success. “I tend to lean more toward efficiency awards,” she says.
“Craftsmanship is important, but it’s the work that moves people forward and generates results that really matters.”
