Opening quote from Rob Guénette: "We ought to shape it before it shapes us. I think that is the right healthy attitude."
Rick Brown: Welcome to "Why Didn't I Think of That?" This is our first episode of 2026, and we have a very special guest with us today. Rob Guénette is here. Rob is the CEO of VML Canada. He's an absolute legend in the advertising business and an incredible storyteller. So stay tuned for this – you're going to love it. And then right after that, we have a panel discussion about gamification with our host Jeremy Lens and Tim Voet.
Interview with Rob Guénette: From Brand Management to Agency Leadership
Rick: Welcome to the show, Rob. Do you want to maybe start with your background and how you got into advertising?
Rob: Sure. So I started my career at Unilever Canada as a client in brand management, and I was there for 14 years. Through that time period, I received the best business education I could ever have gotten. Unilever was amazing in those years. I started in '86 and left in '99, and was able to cross a lot of categories and learned a ton, worked with outstanding people.
Through that, though, I learned that I was really gravitating to one aspect of the job more than the others, and that was the advertising piece. I loved working in the communication area. I loved working with agencies. I loved doing work that the public saw, that impacted our brand and all that stuff. And I decided at one point I wanted to do two things: I wanted to work in advertising, so I'd cross the bridge, and I also wanted to be an owner. I wanted to have an equity stake. So those were my two objectives.
Rick: That's pretty ambitious, right?
Rob: It was. Well, I was at that stage in my life where I was super confident, I was ambitious, and I just wanted to get on with it. And I thought, if it happens, great. If it doesn't happen, you know, I'm happy. I have a good career, I have fun, I work with great people. But I got pretty lucky, and it happened.
The VML Connection
Rob: So what happened was, my first introduction to VML was at a dinner held at Peter Stringham's house in New York shortly after we sold. And he invited myself, my wife, Paul and Jane. And at that dinner was a man named John Cook. This was in 2010. And I met John Cook at that dinner and I was so impressed with John. He's amazing. And I was in awe of the VML trajectory.
And by the way, a little factoid: VML was born in 1992, same year as Taxi. So Taxi was born in Montreal in 1992, VML was born in Kansas City in 1992. Amazing.
So back then, there was a period of time where I would attend meetings in New York that Martin Sorrell chaired, and John Cook would also be attending those meetings. So I got to see John in action. I got to hear about VML. I would do my bit on Taxi, but really we were there because Telus was one of the largest accounts in North America at that time for WPP. It was a big account. It was massive.
So through that introduction, I was always an admirer of VML. And of course, VML was on a different track than Taxi. Taxi was a pure creative shop, really, and VML really started in digital and tech, and solving client problems in different ways – not necessarily through TV and outdoor and all that stuff. It was really wired differently, pun intended.
The Decision to Merge Taxi into VML Canada
Rob: So I always thought – well, first of all, I should say Taxi after the acquisition was a bit of a corporate orphan, right? Two things happened. One, we were attached to the VML system, so I reported to John Cook, and they were great with us. We were integrated, we were on all the global calls. We were part of all of it.
But at one point, I guess I had a moment, sort of one of those epiphanies, and I said, you know, VML's growing and the world is changing fast. They seem to be in the right lane. I thought it was time to change our direction with Taxi. And as you know, there was an opportunity that came up. There was a merger between VML and Y&R, and so at that moment in time, I said, you know what? I'd rather retire Taxi while it's still strong, while it's still great, and decided that it's time to put VML Canada on the map. And that was a manifestation of putting Taxi and WT together as Wunderman Thompson.
And that was a difficult, but I think necessary decision to really go where the growth was and go where the future is. Because I come at things a little bit more left-brain because of my background and how I grew up in business. And also as a person, I'm just not that nostalgic and I'm just not that emotional.
So for me, the way I looked at it, it was important to retain the spirit of Taxi, which lives every day, as you know, at VML Canada – as opposed to just the nomenclature, the naming. And again, I've seen in my – I've been around now 40 years – for me it's about how do we grow, how do we keep all our great people in place? How does everybody get stimulated, learn, and challenged and motivated, right?
And I just at that time thought the VML thing is going to be that thing for us. It's going to offer more career opportunities. I mean, VML is the largest agency in the world – 30,000-plus employees. And of course, as you know, the capabilities we have up and down is insane. So you're going to learn new capabilities, you're going to approach modern marketing in a different way and all that. So that was part of my thinking: how do I, as opposed to trying to keep a brand alive or reinvent a brand or whatever you want to call it, how do I make sure that the best people we have continue to be motivated, stimulated, intellectually stimulated, and future-proofed, if there is such a thing?
So that was part of it. Plus, here's the other thing: I just love change. I'm one of those weird guys.
Rick: Really? Well, now is your time.
Rob: Exactly. But I love it. I love change.
What Change Looks Like at VML Canada
Rick: What's change for you now? Well, how do we work now? That's completely different from before, or is it?
Rob: It is and it isn't, and I'll explain how I look at it. I referred to earlier the spirit of Taxi, and I see VML Canada – its creative soul comes from Taxi. Our ability to challenge status quo internally and externally is still alive. However, I see VML Canada, and I don't mean this with any disrespect to my old Taxi and Paul and Jane and everybody – everybody was there, Ron Wilson, Andrew Simon, all of us – I just think we're more sophisticated now.
I think we can show up no matter what the business problem is. We don't have to white label anything. We don't have to think, "Oh geez, we'll fake it till we make it," all that stuff, right? I just think we have more components. We're firing on many more cylinders. We're more sophisticated. There's more rigor in data, in AI, the whole nine yards, right?
So I think that my objective was – and I think you were in the audience when I said this – my objective was not to sort of take bits of Taxi and bits of Wunderman Thompson, put that in a blender and hit puree and hope something positive comes out. My objective was to start a new culture – and only take the essence of what was really great about Taxi and the essence of what was really great about Wunderman Thompson. So in other words, marry the artists and the geeks. It had to be a new culture.
But the other thing, the other benefit I see that has actually materialized – and I was hoping for...
