People: In the hot seat - Simon Hathaway

Hathaway had been the agency's managing director since its 2005 launch in response to requests from clients, such as Procter & Gamble, for an in-store marketing specialist. The offshoot has since picked up blue-chip accounts including Coca-Cola, Asda and Camelot. Hathaway's new brief is to expand the network's presence throughout Europe.

Despite the large number of shops out there that would argue that they, too, have plenty of in-store experience, Hathaway believes his agency has the edge in terms of understanding consumers' shopping habits.

The difference between his agency and its below-the-line competitors, he says, is that Saatchi X incorporates strategic thought into in-store marketing. It is a gap in the market of which he has been aware throughout his career.

"I was really excited (about joining) because for years I'd worked in sales promotion and experiential," he explains. "I thought back then that we would get found out because we had no strategic background. There were no real planners and none of the insight that the big ad agencies had, just some bright people kicking around ideas. I realised there was an opportunity to reinvent things; obviously since then the industry has reinvented itself and all the good agencies are now converging in the integrated space around digital."

Hathaway says that while sales promotion has mutated into a number of different forms and media, the discipline has retained its essence. "The challenge I'd have for sales promotion agencies is to ask them when they last did an on-pack promo," he adds. "Many agencies have reinvented themselves as brand experience or interactive agencies, but still use sales promotion techniques."

There have been whispers within the agency sector of annoyance at Hathaway's claim to be taking a unique approach to in-store marketing. Yet he insists there has been no ill-feeling among clients' other roster agencies and that they are glad to work alongside Saatchi X. "All other agencies do consumer work,'" he says. "We just look at it from the point of view of how people buy products. We're not competing with the other agencies."

Hathaway's career almost never happened. Spending most of his school time playing sport, he managed to get into a polytechnic as a geography student. It was during this time when he started applying for graduate jobs at some of the big advertising agencies - and was turned down for them all. Hathaway smiles at his past failure to find employment with his current employer. "But that was then, when most graduate trainees came from Oxbridge," he says.

Shortly afterwards he came third in a competition to create a below-the-line campaign, enabling him to generate job offers. However, shortly into his career he took a break, which involved an attempt to make it as a snowboarder - he once came 23rd in the British Championships. Hathaway returned to the industry via Dynamo and later, after a stint at Saatchi & Saatchi running the Visa campaign for the Athens Olympics, was offered the MD role at Saatchi X.

His philosophy on the industry is straightforward. "All great agencies will lose even the most longstanding account if they don't deliver," he says. "That will continue to be to be the case. All the creative hot shops are (part of the) establishment now. There needs to be new ones coming through."

He adds: "The industry has become commoditised. There are three pillars: knowledge, creativity and craft. The craft bit is being taken away. Rates for planners are going up, but those for artwork are coming down dramatically."

It is in this climate that Saatchi X will compete and, as part of the Publicis network, it is well placed to succeed.

CV
2008: CEO regional, Saatchi & Saatchi X
2005: Managing director, Saatchi & Saatchi X
2003: Director, Saatchi & Saatchi
2002: Managing director, Momentum
1998: Director, Dynamo Marketing.