How Ben Lilley and James Greet avoided becoming a ‘Frankenstein agency’ in consolidating Hero
Hero’s founder and CEO Ben Lilley and chief operating officer James Greet speak to Mumbrella’s Calum Jaspan about the new single integrated agency, bringing together the ‘holy trinity’ at scale as an indie and finding clarity one year on.
A year on from consolidating his agencies under a single network, Ben Lilley’s Hero is now fully operational as a single integrated agency with one P&L.
In less than two years, Lilley has put McCann and his other agencies including Red Republic, Smart and BBE among others through a significant transformation with the help of former OMD and Mindshare CEO, James Greet, who joined on a full-time basis earlier this year.
Lilley took private ownership of the legacy agency he led in Australia for the best part of a decade in 2020. He says that while it was a unique opportunity, a bigger one was realised in adding an integrated offering to the scale that McCann already provided.
