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Meet Leo Burnett’s Jarek Ziebinski

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From being a journalist in the midst of Poland's move into democracy to reviving a declining baby food business, Leo Burnett's president, Asia Pacific Jarek Ziebinski tells Marketing about his journey into advertising and his take on driving the business.Describe your management styleI think I’m pretty straightforward and direct kind of a manager. My door is always open, and I’m in touch with the reality of my business.I believe that management’s role is to inspire people to achieve goals and achieve dreams, so I’m trying to be as inspirational leader as possible.Every time I travel and visit my agencies, I’m trying to leave something behind that represents some value. The minute you stop inspiring people and leaving value behind, all your interactions, I think your management is becoming ineffective. Your first job?My first job was as a journalist. I was in it for four years working on an educational program that was helping people understand what market economy was all about when my country, Poland, was going into transformation - from communism to capitalism and democracy. So I wanted to contribute in the best possible way.How did you end up in advertising?From being a journalist I moved to the client side where I got really passionate about marketing. To be fair, I was a self made marketing man. I read a lot of books about marketing and advertising, and I was curious about marketing products and services.  I ended up as marketing director of Gerber Products Company - one of the international companies investing in emerging Central and Eastern Europe- which had just started producing baby food in Poland.But what happened is, shortly after they came to Poland and they bought the factory and invested a lot, we started realizing that the birth rate was dropping radically. So instead of 750, 000 babies every year it was down to 400,000, and then 350,000. So we had a massive problem. So my boss comes to me and said: “I have invested millions, I have production lines that are maybe only 50% or 60% used. Come up with an idea that will help me get returns on my investment."  That took three years of my life, and I ended up creating a product called Frugo, a fruit drink. (If you have baby food production lines you realize that you can also produce a fruit drink.) So we came up with this idea, myself with my marketing team, and our product called Frugo was on the market in early 1996. The rest was history.When I was preparing to launch this brand on the Polish market, I needed my advertising agency to help me launch the product and the campaign. I ended up in the final stage of the pitch with two agencies, and one of the two agencies was Leo Burnett. Guess who won the pitch? Leo Burnett?No. the other agency won the pitch, which obviously was not good news for LB, so the minute I announced the news, I got a phone call from the managing director of Leo Burnett in Poland, who called me to express his extreme unhappiness. While we eventually ended in peace, the agency sent me a beautiful book on Leo Burnett’s speeches over the years.There was a letter in it which went “We’re still crying that we did not win the pitch, but we want to win you for Leo Burnett. Please consider this letter as a formal job offer as managing director of Leo Burnett Poland."But I still had to launch Frugo, so only a year and a half later, after the product launch, I took up the role at the agency in February 1996.(Pictured: Ziebinski with his team in Poland)Who was the mentor that most influenced you?Michael Conrad, who was then the global chief creative officer of LB Worldwide and who still is a very good friend of mine. I learnt a lot from him – he helped me to find the right talent and bring it back to my country then. He inspired me to build cross cultural team (Poland was a very homogenous country, unlike Singapore where you have so many ethnicities.) He was my guru and my supporter.What was the proudest moment of your career?I was going to Golden Drum Festival, hoping to win the title of Agency of the Year in New Europe. The moment we won was the proudest moment, I started crying. (pictured below).I experienced similar feelings just a few months ago when I was on stage with my team receiving an award for Creative Network of the Year 2013 in Asia Pacific at AdFest. What about the worst moment of your career?When I was running the agency and it was the fastest growing and biggest in the country, I had one huge client that was representing a massive percentage of my revenue. One day I lost the client. Imagine you lose, over a period of two or three months, 40% of your business. It was one of the moments in my career which scared me the most, and I realized how much I was responsible for the people in my agency. I took a lot of risk because I decided to not fire anyone. The whole team that was serving that account became a new business team, and I gave myself 12 months to rebuild the strategy.15 months later we were bigger agency than before we lost the business. That’s the thing about this industry, you can go very low, but if you work hard, you can turn around a business in 12 or 18 months. (And you can ruin the business in 12 months too.)So what are you up to when you’re not working?Shall I be honest about my addiction to work? I love my job, as I said, so I spend a lot of time working and traveling, and that takes me quite often far away from home. But when I am home, I will enjoy every moment with my family.

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