Andy Greenaway opens new media and creative agency, The TAO of Advertising

Marketing veteran Andy Greenaway has opened his own media and creative agency, The TAO of Advertising. 

The TAO of Advertising brings media and creative services together and aims to use AI to find real and live insights - and thus create on-point messaging in its ads, according to Greenaway in a conversation with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, adding that he is a big believer in differentiation.

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"Finding a clear position in the creative services business is extremely difficult," he said. "It has taken me four years to find one. I started in direct marketing and thought I'd get back into something that was adjacent to that space. I noticed that all the performance ads I saw in my news feeds were terrible - and that there had to be a better way of doing it," he said.  

Greenaway added that his ads find precise audiences, cutting down on wastage.

"We use data to help steer our strategy week on week. TAO, in Chinese philosophy, is the way. And we want our business to be the way of advertising," said Greenaway, adding that he aims to build a very modern agency. 

Greenaway will take on the role of chief executive officer, chief commercial officer and head of copy in the new agency. He added that the agency is aiming to be a global business and can deliver its campaigns in over 80 countries.

"We already talking to several clients in Southeast Asia," he said.

Greenaway was previously the chief executive officer and chief creative officer at RUMBLE Strategic Creative, a role he held for four years. He told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that he is still a director with the company but that he doesn't "see a future in the 'old' model of advertising." As a result, he has decided to leave the company "dormant".

"To be honest, creative services was just getting too damned hard. It’s saturated, fees are plummeting, client loyalty is low and there isn’t an appreciation of good quality work anymore, it seems," said Greenaway in a LinkedIn update. 

He added that one day, he was struck by "how bad the digital ads were" in his news feeds.

"I started thinking about how I would approach direct response advertising in today’s world," he said. After much testing, The Tao of Advertising was born. 

"Since then, we’ve worked on six other campaigns, all of them generating response rates way above your expected benchmarks," he wrote. 

Prior to his stint at RUMBLE, Greenaway was the executive creative director at Dentsu Singapore, a rile he held for just over three years till September 2019. In his role, Greenaway's scope extended into strategic thinking through performance-driven ideas, mentorship and training as well as new business pitches.  

Prior to joining dentsu, he had a three-year stint at Publicis' SapientNitro. He held the position of APAC ECD with SapientNitro. Previously, he spent eight years with Saatchi & Saatchi. Greenaway also brings with him creative expertise having worked in various roles across Ogilvy where he spent nearly 16 years. 

Picture courtesy of Andy Greenaway/LinkedIn 

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