Simon Ryan sat down with The CEO Magazine days after celebrating his fortieth birthday. He has a presence that belies his age, but is grounded and clearly in touch with the industry, his peers, and the marketplace. “Working for a big brand is one thing,” Simon says, ”but it means nothing if you arent surrounded by the right people, relevant market insights, and the belief that you can change the way people work to meet the needs of an ever-changing media business environment.”
Simon is the CEO of Carat Australia & New Zealand, one of the largest media agency businesses in the region, with more than $1.2 billion in annual billings and over 450 staff. Carat represents the media interests of an extensive list of clients, including Holden, Flight Centre, Mondelez, David Jones, Australian Super, LOreal, Schweppes, Super Retail Group, Virgin, Walt Disney, and Carsales.
Simon made a conscious switch to the media industry in 1993 with Channel 7 a far cry from where his career began at AXA working in superannuation paving the way for access to some of the brightest minds in media, before he was poached by media agency Universal McCann (UM) in 1996. Simon says, We were already seeing the emergence of digital, and it was changing the way our clients looked at their media spend but many were nervous about making any wholesale changes.