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Rob and Lolly: The pairing at the new creative heart of M+C Saatchi
Rob and Lolly are among the most well known creative teams in the world. Their 20 year partnership is one for the ages. And six months ago, they took on a new challenge as M+C Saatchi's first ever global chief creative officers.
During their recent visit to Australia, Rob Doubal and Laurence 'Lolly' Thomson sat down to chat exclusively with Mumbrella's Lauren McNamara.
When asked to think of a power couple, a dynamic duo, a dream team, one may think of Mario and Luigi. Or Bonnie and Clyde. Or Bert and Ernie.
But for the global creative industry, there’s one more duo that comes to mind: Rob and Lolly.
Arguably one of the world’s most well-known creative teams, the pair have worked together for nearly 20 years and can read each other like a book. They’re so in sync, in fact, that they often finish each other’s sentences.
Neither of them had straightforward paths to the advertising world — Doubal studied politics and Thomson was doing computing courses — but it all came down to one day in 2006 at Mother London.
Thomson, who had been working at the UK agency for five years by then, took Doubal, who had just returned to London after three years in Amsterdam, under his wing.
Taking a chance on the “Dutch boy” (who isn’t actually Dutch), Thomson got a taste for Doubal’s talent, and over time as other partnerships within the agency changed, the two got paired up together officially.
Rob Doubal and Lolly Thomson
“I didn’t speak for about three months, they definitely thought I was Dutch,” Doubal tells Mumbrella. “And once I did start to speak up, Lolly was already working with a team but they asked him to see how we got on. Then over time, partnerships changed, and we ended up working together.”
Thomson says Doubal was a “tenacious” creative from day one, so much so that Mother’s co-founder Mark Waites started getting a high volume of post-it notes with creative ideas on his desk every single day.
“It was an ‘idea a day’ type thing, he’d just put it down on Mark’s desk and all of a sudden, he had loads.”
From Mother, the duo moved to Wieden+Kennedy as creative directors for nearly three years, before jumping over to McCann London, where they spent 12 years, eventually climbing the ranks to become co-presidents and chief creative officers.
Then when they moved to McCann London, the industry had quite a reaction.
“All out friends said not to do it, they never thought we’d be able to turn it around,” Thomson says.
“But we took a chance, and after two, three years, we did start turning it around. We went into an agency kind of not knowing what we’re doing, and we came out of it, over a decade later, knowing exactly what we’re doing.”
Essentially, they took the lessons from the cultures at Mother and Wieden+Kennedy, and “made them [their] own”, he tells Mumbrella.
As one of the global creative industry’s most renowned duos, the pair often get asked about conflict or disagreement, and how they manage that. But according to Doubal, these days, they are “almost exactly aligned” on their values and how they attach it to work.
“Even with micro differences in our approach, we’re on the same journey,” he tells Mumbrella.
He joked that “Lolly’s a genuine creative and his tangential thinking is beautiful and wonderful”, so they can cover all sides of the creative spectrum.
And while agencies have in the past tried to poach just one of them, the pair see the value in their teamwork and wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Having two people on the same mission is so important,” Doubal says. “The creative industries do fight entropy and belief in creative, so just having two people on the same journey is good.
“We rescue each other, we support each other. Sometimes we play good cop, bad cop, and who is who can change. But it’s all about support.”
Now, nearly 20 years in, the pair are attempting to pave the way for the next era of creativity as M+C Saatchi’s new global chief creatives.
The pair saw an opportunity in the M+C brand name and its specialisms. Doubal says they wouldn’t have joined if they didn’t see the chance to help the brand grow.
“We looked at it and thought, this place is ripe for the future and a bit of growth.”
Much like their move to McCann, joining M+C Saatchi was described as a “shock move” by many in the industry, which Doubal instantly dismissed.
“There wasn’t any hesitation from me at all. All I saw was an excellent opportunity and an excellent brand name.”
Rob and Lolly
Their appointments six months ago marked the first of its kind for M+C Saatchi, the first time it was globalising the chief creative position. According to Thomson, that’s the core of the job — unifying the global team to move forward.
“You can feel the potential is here,” he tells Mumbrella. “So we’re here to align it from a global point of view, grow the impact, and get diversity of thought in from all the different groups of people.”
Despite the positive outlook, there are still challenges for Doubal and Thomson, including the task of selling creativity as a commodity.
“It’s odd, and it’s ongoing,” Doubal says. “And there’s entropy, which is often fear or risk in clients’ minds … So making the case in the old days would be for making risky work, but in our heads, it’s the opposite. For us, there’s huge risk is not making work that will be effective.”
Last month, M+C Saatchi officially rebranded and introduced its new proposition — ‘Cultural Power’ — which Doubal and Thomson have been tasked with bringing to life creatively.
But how? How does one instill cultural power into everything an agency produces? According to the pair, it’s really quite simple.
They explain it’s about making work that resonates with a culture, whether that be mass culture or right down to the culture of an individual.
Because M+C Saatchi has a history of cultural influence, Doubal says last month’s repositioning was more of a “reaffirming”.
“It’s the rearticulation of something which is true to the business,” he says. “We hope we can live up to it.”
Unlike their previous experience, Doubal and Thomson’s job is “less of a culture change of this place, and more of a supercharge”.
Six months in, the pair are starting to see M+C Saatchi’s work “change a little bit”. Thomson says that in another six months time, he hopes to look back and think ‘wow, I didn’t expect to see that from M+C’.
“That’s how you test the value of creative. Looking back at what you were selling, what people were making, and how it was received.”
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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Laurence ThomsonM&C SaatchiM&C Saatchi GroupMotherRob & LollyRob and LollyRob DoubalWieden+Kennedy
I wish there was a way we could tell which one was good and which one was evil.
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