Dentsu has restructured its business with dozens of staff impacted in a round of redundancies and job changes.

Mi3 understands the restructure has impacted at least 40 people across the entire group – market rumblings have it significantly higher than that – and is being driven by challenging trading conditions. 

Mi3 understands Carat’s Chief Investment Officer Craig Cooper, Dentsu ANZ Chief Product Officer Richard Pook, Dentsu ANZ Head of Brand Marketing Linda Fagerlund and Dentsu Head of Digital Delivery Louisa Lewis have also left the group. In the past week, Saatchi & Saatchi Australia hired Dentsu Creative’s Chief Creative Officers Mandie van der Merwe and Avish Gordhan.

Dentsu would not comment on the names of individuals involved, but Mi3 understands it impacts Dentsu's media, creative and other agencies, and is part of a global and regional exercise to reduce costs.

“Like many other businesses, we’re not immune to the macro-economic situation that we all currently live in and we do need to address this so we're coming out the other side stronger,” Dentsu ANZ CEO Patricio De Matteis said. “This has unfortunately meant that we've seen some impacts on our people, which any leader will know is never an easy decision to make.”

Transformation pain

Dentsu has made a series of redundancies in recent years as the agency group has reduced its number of brands and moved towards a hybrid agency and consultancy business model.

Part of a global strategy deployed by former boss Wendy Clark, De Matteis’ predecessor Angela Tangas presided over a transformation program across Australia and New Zealand during the years she was at the helm, reducing the number of Dentsu businesses from to 25 to its five global brands – Dentsu Creative, Dentsu X, Carat, iProspect and Merkle, which operate across three service streams: media, creative and customer experience management.  

Kirsty Muddle leads Dentsu Creative; Danny Bass helms Dentsu’s Media business including Carat, iProspect and Dentsu X; Steve Yurisich heads up Merkle across both ANZ, and Chris Bower leads Dentsu’s business consulting arm, across APAC. According to its website, around 1,500 people work across Dentsu ANZ.

Under Tangas, dozens of senior and mid-tier executives exited a business that had incurred losses upwards of $50 million over 2020 and 2021. Tangas previously defended her record towards the end of her tenure, telling Mi3 she had “doubled the enterprise value” of the business since taking the top job in 2019. She left in September 2022 to take over the helm of Dentsu UK&I.

De Matteis joined Dentsu in January from US IT consulting and business process outsourcing giant Cognizant, where he was Chief Digital Officer. He spent a large part of his career at Accenture Interactive (now Accenture Song) where he was APAC Managing Director until 2019 and helped secure the deal to acquire Australian creative shop The Monkeys for $63m.

His appointment from a consultancy to an advertising group was considered left-field at the time, but aligned with Dentsu’s global strategy to operate as a hybrid between an agency group and consultancy.

Although he has presided over the latest round of job losses, Dentsu has also made some notable incomings in the past year. Danny Bass was appointed last August to lead its media arm and has brought in Ben Shepherd and Anthony Bartram as investment leads. Bass and his team also secured an extension with one of Dentsu's largest clients, Woolworths. 

This week, Dentsu Creative hired DDB's Katie Firth to lead its Victorian business as Melbourne managing director, and last year the agency made a series of appointments in December, including creative director Trent Hendrick.

The cuts come against a backdrop of downsizing by holdcos both globally and locally, with Sorrell's S4 Capital last week confirming 500 layoffs – and signalling more to come. Asia Pacific was its hardest hit division, per latest results.