the map village street editors

A fleeting moment is all that’s needed to change the course of life. Advertising dynamo Todd Sampson’s watershed was an ear-opening lecture for one of his MBA classes. If Todd’s regular marketing lecturer hadn’t broken her back and invited the creative director of an ad agency to give the lecture in her absence, Todd might have held different ambitions. As destiny would have it, this sharp Nova Scotian – recipient of a full college scholarship, current CEO of ad agency Leo Burnett Sydney, co-creator of Earth Hour, doting father and part of ABC’s The Gruen Transfer’s brain trust – has done his parents, who taught him that education was his plane ticket to a life outside small-town Canada, exceedingly proud.
With what seems a characteristically candid approach, Todd declares, “Prior to advertising, I was confused”. Having spent his boyhood in Cape Breton on Canada’s east coast, the adman with a penchant for adventure quips that his only dream “was to get out”. Though now a chief executive, and prior to that a managing partner and head of strategy for more than a decade, back then, as he escaped the world by climbing trees, possibly plotting up there mischief he would later make with neighbourhood friends; he didn’t even know what advertising was. While neither of his parents had a formal education – his mother, a cashier for KFC (who would cry for a week when Todd left home at 16 for university) and his father, a factory worker for Coca Cola – they recognised Todd’s potential for greatness and encouraged him to chase after it. “Although they couldn’t really help me with my homework, they did stress the importance of doing it.”

As might be expected of a boy who admired mountaineer Edmund Hillary and longed to be Astro Boy, Todd felt suffocated in the world of banking, which he joined before embarking on his MBA. “At that moment I knew what I wanted to do,” he recalls of his first exposure to the creative business world. Now, as he sits in a television studio to the audience’s left of The Gruen Transfer host Wil Anderson and fellow regular panellist Russel Howcroft, he looks very much
at home in this creative business.

Named after the guy who invented the shopping mall, The Gruen Transfer sees industry panellists dissecting ads for everything, from telco services to feminine hygiene products, in a way that’s at once engaging, informative and amusing. As Todd takes on issues such as the motivations of marketers and advertising ethics, the young executive is poised, articulate and has a wit to match his funnyman host.

Todd – he’s the one with the dark features, subtly Canadian accent and stubbled jaw – joined Leo Burnett Sydney in 2002, prior to which he helped lead other highly successful agencies. Among his current portfolio of clients are Bundy Rum, Colgate Palmolive, NRMA and Subaru. One of the industry’s most awarded strategists, he is proudest of his campaign for Earth Hour, which became the biggest voluntary power down in history, uniting 50 million people in over 350 cities in 2008. Promoting a greater awareness of global warming, Earth Hour was
a collaborative initiative between the World Wildlife Fund (for whom Todd’s agency works pro bono), Fairfax and Leo Burnett.
“Our inspiration was fear,” – an unforeseen response from Todd, yet the rationale is seamless. “We all know that global warming is a serious issue, yet it was hard for people to actually do something about it. We feared that most people would worry but not actually do anything. The best way to alleviate fear
is do something about it.”

Initially a local Sydney event in 2007, Earth Hour morphed into a global movement in only its second year. Businesses as well as individuals participated: restaurants held candlelit dinners; iconic landmarks such as Alcatraz Jail, Sydney Opera House and the Coke billboard in Times Square went dark; Google’s homepage went black; and NASA photographed the whole thing from space. The key to its momentum was threefold: a very simple idea (switching out the lights), a populace approach (not asking people to take sides) and letting go (they didn’t try to control it). “Earth Hour quickly became a wave that was bigger than any of us … It now belongs to the globe,” Todd explains.

When asked why he cares about the environment, he responds in earnest. “I am not a greenie. What I care about is the future I am leaving for my children. I also don’t believe as humans we are any better or more precious than the smallest ant. Yet we are doing a fantastic job of systematically messing it up for everyone. Knowing this, it is hard not to want to help.”

As well as the public’s immediate response – turning off lights and household appliances, taking mobile phone chargers off standby – research on last year’s Earth Hour found it had a sustained behavioural effect on Sydneysiders. If an astounding 39% of Sydney residents were influenced to make ongoing changes to reduce their impact on the environment in 2007, consider the magnitude of the behavioural change impelled by the 2008 event! The industry, too, recognised the campaign’s ingenuity – last year Todd’s co-creation won a coveted Titanium Lion at Cannes and B&T’s Creative Campaign of the Year in Australia.

Todd’s creative ambition is to make Leo Burnett the most imaginative company in Australia, but also the best in the world at talent management, or, put simply, the best place people have ever worked. Known for his professional philosophy ‘People first, then product, then profit’, his responsibility as CEO is to the people who work for the agency. “In this role, it is my turn to focus on others and give back. We are not perfect at this and we have certainly made mistakes but our ambition and intention is clear.”

Beyond the lofty career heights Todd has reached, he has followed
in the literal footsteps of the man he admired as a child to reach
the summit of Mount Everest. “When I got to the top I had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude. This lasted for less than a minute and then I had an overwhelming feeling of ‘shit, I need to get out of here’. At the top you are only halfway and I was fully aware that most people die on the way down.
A storm was coming … it was time to move, not reminisce,” he says
of his awe-inspiring conquest.

Todd concedes that his new television role had its own risks, albeit of the professional variety. Would he one day have to justify his on-screen comments to a future client? “I didn’t jump at this opportunity as much as I hesitantly edged towards it … in the end I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I decided that I would be honest and straightforward just the way I am every day with our clients and if a potential client sees me on air and thinks ‘I wouldn’t want to work with him’, then they would have never been a client anyway.”

By Todd’s definition, personal success isn’t measured by one’s working life, but rather their family life – something he admits he’s still working hard on. “Coco,
my 19-month-old daughter, is my inspiration. I watch her with amazement as she grows, learns and adapts every day. The thing I love most is when I come home and she runs all the way down the hallway as fast as her little legs can and jumps into my arms.”

The Gruen Transfer returns to the ABC in early 2009. For more information,
go to www.abc.net.au/tv/gruentransfer

Interview By Sally Brown