Identity change

After two years of fallout from the PwC tax leaks scandal enveloping its former CEO Luke Sayers – and a lewd picture posted on his X account – the boutique consulting firm Sayers Group he founded to take on the big four consulting rivals, has rebranded to Tenet Advisory & Investments. 

Former PwC partner and co-host on Melbourne’s top rating 3AW breakfast show, Russel Howcroft, is also a partner in Tenet where the firm is rapidly expanding its marketing and customer practice, led by a former partner at PwC’s CMO Advisory unit Justin Papps.    

Yesterday the firm confirmed to Mi3 it had appointed former Coles360 retail media boss, Paul Brooks, and ex-Deloitte Digital partner Mat Norton as Tenet partners to drive its expansion ambitions. 

Papps referred to Sayers’ quotes to the AFR for the official line and rationale behind the rebrand in which he said “the distractions of inquiries into the PwC matters over the past two years, followed by more recent and disproportionate media intrusion into my private life, have been challenging for all. It is the right time to move forward with a new identity, as we transition from a start-up to a significant participant in the sector.”

The rebrand comes as Papps and his three partners in what was called Sayers Brand Momentum, hit the expansion lever. The big consulting firms are under fees pressure as governments cut big consulting engagements and the private sector has also turned to smaller, boutique, second tier advisory practices as alternatives to the big four.

The upshot for Tenet’s marketing and customer unit is six partners at the helm, less executional work but broader, deeper firepower in the key areas challenging corporate marketing customer and tech remits. The appointment of Brooks and ex-Deloitte Digital transformation, martech, AI and privacy specialist Mat Norton as partners was part of the new expansionist blueprint, Papps told Mi3.  

He said Brooks will guide retailers, media owners and brands through an overheated marketplace – Brooks sees some major cracks emerging and said they are only going to get worse. “Bad actors” he said, risk filling the void.

Norton’s deep experience across “the intersection of technology, data privacy and AI” is likewise in high demand.

“Mat's experience at Deloitte Digital beefs up our capability [in those areas]. When you're sitting in a boardroom and you're sitting across from a CIO or a CTO, and they want to talk about the privacy implications around sharing first party data with an external technology provider, you've got to have somebody in the room who really understands that,” said Papps.

“Sitting alongside a CMO, someone like Mat just adds that degree of credibility, but also reassurance that we're linking these things together – and that is what we’re seeing in pretty much every conversation now.”

Growth vs cuts

Though the world is rapidly changing, Papps is betting that the “fundamental principles – or tenets – that drive value creation and growth” still apply.

“That's what we're focused on, and that's what gets the results for clients. So that's where the name Tenet comes from: Advisory, because in our advisory space, the three pillars are strategy, M&A and tech. Then we also have investments – we look for opportunities where we can put skin in the game.”

Papps suggests one thing that differentiates Tenet from its consulting rivals is a focus on growth.

“There's a lot of people out there who can drive a cost out program. Trying to find people who can actually find ways to drive growth and value creation is harder, but, within strategy, that's the work we like to focus on, from organisational through to operational and product.

“The M&A side is everything from buy-side to sell-side, deal prep, due diligence, looking for roll ups, opportunities value creation. Whether you're a buyer or a seller, we've got an M&A team that do that,” said Papps.

“And our technology practice, as you would expect, is everything around technology consulting,”

Execution down-weighted?

Does that mean Tenet is pulling back from brand strategy execution?

“We still do that when required,” per Papps, but it’s through specialist partners. “Our own rebrand is a good example. We did all of the strategy and implementation, but we got a good design company, the Core Agency, who helped us with some of the design pieces on it, and that system works really well.

“A lot of the clients we work with, when we've done a brand strategy, we'll often partner with their agency to execute, and if they don't have an agency, that's when we'll lean in. So it's a pretty flexible approach. There's a lot of great agencies out there who we like to partner with when the time comes.”

Better call Paul

Paul Brooks had barely left Coles’ media unit before the phone rang. It was Papps, followed by a queue of brands, publishers and agencies as the market scraps to ride retail media’s investment trajectory.

Papps and Brooks were introduced by former Coles CMO, the late Lisa Ronson, “and every time we were together, she’d say ‘you guys should do something together, “ per Papps. “So we’ve finally come good on that promise.”

Papps and Brooks see urgent need for sober council amid an overheating market – and an opportunity across retailers, brands and media owners to help steer away from what Brooks describes as the “bad actors” and hype merchants that inevitably follow the money.

“We're already working with a couple of retailers on helping them understand what the opportunity is – doing the business case, market sizing,” said Papps. “For some it could end up as not the right thing. For others it could be ‘it is the right thing, and here’s how to do it’.

“There’s a lot of noise in market.” Cutting through it, “that’s where we’ve seen the opportunity. And I think Brooks had probably spun out of Coles for maybe 34 seconds before I got on the phone.”

Challenges mount

Tenet aims to work across the market – retailers, publishers and brands.

“We're not beholden to any part of the market. It's actually finding the right advice to help them make the right decision – and we're very clear around that and transparent with who we work with,” per Papps.

Brooks said that’s what convinced him to choose Tenet over agency, publisher or brand gigs – having previously worked across all three at GroupM, Aegis, Nine and Coles over the last 15 years. The market, he said, badly lacks independent advice.

“We’re starting to see some real challenges coming in with retail media … I think with all high growth markets, you've got lots of potentially bad actors as well looking to play. And everybody is looking to do something in this space – but some of them don’t know why,” said Brooks.

“For retailers it’s reasonably straightforward as to why they could do it – but just because you could, it doesn't mean you should.

“Agencies and agency groups are looking to move into this space, obviously technology companies are playing quite hard in there, and there's a lot of those that have been spun out.

“So the more of these [players there are], it’s going to be more challenging for brands to be able to navigate that … And what there isn't is an organisation to be able to be genuinely independent and help advise around that process.”

Complexity incoming

Brooks acknowledged that the “big four or five” consulting firms do advise on business case support, but he says the “messy middle” beyond that is where things come unstuck, “and there’s not many people that can advise clients to do that in the right way”.

Which means those either in market with a retail media play – or working out if and how to launch one are reliant on a burgeoning pool of vested interests.

“Essentially, the technology companies have led the narrative around retail media in Australia,” per Brooks, with most retailers “not willing to lead the narrative and be the leader because of governance etcetera. So tech has led the narrative. But that is only a very narrow part of it."

Meanwhile the number of tech firms staking out their turf – those that can provide on-site ad serving or off-site ad capability – is exploding. “That is a real challenge,” per Brooks – and it’s going to get worse.

“There's loads of firms spinning up and claiming they can bring everything together. But there is no silver bullet – and that's challenging with just one retailer. If you look at the US, they went from 68 to 96 retail media networks last year. We're probably about six to eight in Australia [right now], there'll probably be another six to eight, maybe a little bit more.

“If you're a brand or a client trying to navigate that, it is fraught with challenges – from standardisation, metrics, measurement, ways of working, ease of doing business. So I think that all of those brands are going to be looking for independent advice along that journey. That's the role that we can fulfil.”

Bad actors

Asked to elaborate on what “bad actors” might look like, Brooks suggested it would be those involved in a different form of what has occurred in any high growth and complex market.

“I would look at the two previous phases – around search and social – in terms of the growth that happened and in and around programmatic.”

Papps argued those over-inflating expectation risk causing bigger problems.

“One of the biggest challenges is over-promising. One of the things that we've unpacked a lot is [when a client] has had somebody come in and say, ‘You've got all these assets; you're sitting on $170 million worth of unrealised revenue, and all you have to do is turn on a retail media network.’

“It doesn't take a lot to just do some basic maths and work out that you can't assume 100 per cent fill rates on a screen asset, 24/7 on the foot traffic based on your biggest store. That just doesn't work. So when we say ‘bad actors’, a lot of the time we spend is correcting misinformation and actually building a proper business case, rather than an ambitious wish,” per Papps.

He said that can mean the first meeting with a retailer or brand can be “slightly deflating for them … but it gives them a sense of reality. It comes back to the value of experience and independence. We're not pushing a platform. We're actually looking for what is the realistic growth lever that you're going to pull, and what should you expect as a result?”

Brooks, having led Coles’ retail media operation from inception, suggests financial realism and informed buy-in across the business is fundamental – or blowback inevitably follows.

“If you start by over-promising on revenue that doesn’t get achieved, it’s going to really struggle to deliver on that proposition. So that validation and setting expectations upfront is absolutely critical."

Brooks sees ongoing opportunity working through “the messy middle” as retail media businesses mature, “to help them make better decisions on who to partner with.”

"A couple of years ago there were only two or three tech players" vying to provide on- and off-site adtech capability to retailers, he said. "Now there are 12. So even if you are [active] within retail media, it is hard to keep up. If you're a brand or a retailer or anyone that's not that close to it, it's almost impossible,.

“So I think retailers are going to be looking for people that they can trust to be – and not rely on revenue businesses and self-interest.”

Less personalisation, more

Twenty years ago, Mathew Norton was working with Digitas in New York prior to its acquisition by Publicis. Since then he’s worked at JWT, his own consulting ventures, and most recently five years at Deloitte Digital delivering “full-scale marketing transformation programs”.

“I was the privacy lead for Deloitte Digital and worked closely with our risk team to go in and say, ‘What are the privacy reforms coming up? How will they impact you? What do you need to do from your data lineage, your tech stack, your compliance?”

But with a twist: “I actually bought the CX lens: ‘How is that impacting customers? How do you actually make sure that the journey is not interrupted by having too much privacy in there? So I was more ‘let's make it a competitive differentiation versus a compliance-led thing’”.

That’s the approach he’s bringing to Tenet. Plus, how to bring rapid wins as pressure on martech budgets – and pressure for results – increases.

“I think CFOs have been overpaying,” for martech, he suggests, with buyers too often oversold on too many use cases.

“I think the way that smarter organisations are going about it is saying ‘we're going to take three use cases for you, we're going to set up a smaller license, we understand where it fits within your value chain and run it for value like that' – rather than promising the world and not being able to deliver anything.”

Instead of trying to do “5,000 things in personalisation”, Norton’s experience suggests it's better “to do four things really well – the four core journeys your customers will notice and will hopefully drive revenue.

“That is where we are seeing value”.