The Big Idea
Twenty-eight years across some of the world’s biggest creative networks. Now Global Group CEO of We Are Social, the largest and most-awarded social-first creative agency, on what social-first really means, why the big idea is bigger than ever, and why the worst thing a brand can do today is be ignorable.
“Brand strategy means everything.”
Toby Southgate is Global Group CEO of We Are Social, the world’s first, largest and most-awarded global social-first creative agency, with 1,200 people across 16 offices. Twenty-eight years on a path that started by accident at a creative agency in Edinburgh in the late 90s, ran through WPP’s Brand Union (where he became the network’s youngest Worldwide CEO at 35), McCann Worldgroup and Forsman & Bodenfors, and now lands at the agency rebuilding the role of social in the creative mix.
Toby grew up wanting to be a professional cricketer. He went to university for economics on his grandfather’s advice (art was not a proper subject), spent six months in a bank, hated it, moved back to Scotland, joined a publishing company that was experimenting with selling content online, and got a call from an Edinburgh agency that thought he knew something about the internet. He arrived expecting a recruitment agency and found Navy Blue: a warehouse full of skateboards, sneakers, loud music, and a chairman called Phil Jones running a .com division. He never left the industry.
In December 2007 Toby was recruited through WPP to join Brand Union, initially to launch a new office in Abu Dhabi. He spent two years in the Middle East, then a year in New York managing the integration of JWT’s Corporate Communications business and Ogilvy’s Brand Identity Group into the Brand Union US operation. He ran the UK and Ireland business from 2011 to 2013, became CEO Americas in 2013, and on 1 July 2015 became Worldwide CEO of Brand Union, WPP’s youngest network CEO at the time. Clients included Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Vodafone, Sony, IAG, HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline and Reckitt Benckiser.
From September 2017 Toby spent four years at McCann Worldgroup as Chief Growth Officer in New York, working on the agency’s second-stage journey to becoming great again. From August 2021 to October 2024 he was Global CEO of Forsman & Bodenfors, the Swedish creative collective inside Stagwell, helping integrate the agency globally through the holding group’s evolution. In February 2025 he became Global Group CEO of We Are Social, the social-first creative agency owned by Plus Company, with clients including adidas, Samsung, Netflix, Visa, Microsoft, Activision and Google.
“Creativity is the whole solution to the problem.”
“We Are Social is not we are social media. It is a statement on how human beings build relationships.”
Social media started as a channel and became something larger: the place where audiences set the pace, where brands are met (or not) by communities, where the truth is in the comments rather than the content. Toby’s argument is that the lessons from social, what used to be a narrow specialism, now apply across the whole marketing mix. Brands that show up authentically and credibly inside the communities they want to reach earn traction quickly. Brands that show up inauthentically, reactively or out of step with what the community already thinks get found out faster than they used to.
“A sexy headline, a funky soundtrack and an anthemic film is no longer enough. The power of a big idea is greater than ever.”
The Ogilvy-and-Mather 1990s definition of a big idea (the anthemic film, the killer headline, the soundtrack that carried the campaign) is not the same big idea agencies present today. No brand on the planet now has the media dollars to guarantee an anthemic film alone will hit the marketing goal. The big idea still exists. It can live in organic social, in community participation, in unignorable craft that real people choose to share. Its definition evolved; its power expanded.
“Creativity is the whole solution to the problem. It is never just an execution.”
Toby’s definition of creativity is not the deliverable. AI can now make something average instantly, free, and to a passable standard. That ability commoditises execution. What remains is creativity as a way of thinking, the consideration of the problem, the craft of the response, the question of who shows up and how. In a world where anyone can make something okay quickly, only great cuts through. The worst thing a brand can do is be ignorable. The route out of ignorable is craft inside an idea that has done the strategic thinking first.
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