AWARDS
INDUSTRY LEADER OF THE YEAR: Pete Khoury Leading his team of ‘pirates’ into the wild seas every day
T
his year’s AdFocus Industry Leader of the Year is chief creative officer of TBWA Hunt Lascaris, Peter Khoury, a man who has played a leading role in delivering growth to his clients’ bottom line while accumulating more than 200 awards at international and local award shows. He’s the chair of the Creative Circle and sits on the Facebook Creative Council for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region as well as the Loeries board. Khoury was a unanimous decision as this year’s industry leaders, standing out as a result of his steady consistency despite operating in a highly pressured and often egotistical environment. The judges agreed that — even observed from a distance — it’s clear that Khoury is a chief creative officer that really cares about his team and nurtures them to their full potential. He is one of the few creative directors with the ability to grow and elevate others while maintaining his own grounded and humble attitude — all the while being utterly brilliant at what he does. A man without airs and graces, he is universally admired in the industry and as such, a worthy recipient of the title Industry Leader of the Year. His journey into advertising was by no means a foregone conclusion. When he was 15 years old, Khoury went to Video Lab to see what they do there as he loved animation and was keen to pursue it as a career. He was advised to study at the AAA School of Advertising when he left school. His mind was made up when AAA came to his school to show the students what it did, including a stop-frame animation that a AAA student had done for Coca-Cola. He was sold, only realising when he eventually got to AAA that the course was more about the curation of ideas than animation. Fortunately, he loved it. He quickly realised that if the idea was lacking, no matter what you did, it would only be as good as the idea. “I wasn’t interested in executing other people’s shit ideas as an animator so I doubled down on advertising,” he recalls. “This is the same reason that I’ve never 22 - AdFocus 2020
Pete Khoury: Good leaders take the time to teach and share their knowledge and secrets
moved into film directing — I’m not interested in executing somebody else’s mediocre ideas.” As a leader he believes in practicing what he preaches and leading by example. He says it’s important to create an environment where everyone has a voice and is equal before the idea, while making an extra effort to ensure the introverts speak up — because often their ideas bring balance to the room. Good leaders, he says, take the time to teach and share their knowledge and secrets, to help those who work under them become better than they themselves are. Khoury is renowned for rolling up his sleeves and getting stuck in. “As a leader I have found that the more you know the details of what it takes to pull something off, the more specific you can be when briefing, questioning, presenting and explaining. This knowledge comes from a consistent attitude, over many
years, of wanting to learn all the rules so I could break them. I used to get frustrated when people gave me technical reasons for not being able to do something. I didn’t like not knowing the details of these reasons because I wanted to challenge them.” As a young creative he soon realised that creative directors gave more guidance to either the art director or copy writer depending on what there were by trade. “I realised I never wanted to be that kind of creative director. Instead, I wanted to be able to give anyone I oversaw the best in-depth feedback and direction in their specific area of responsibility. To do that meant that I had to learn and master everything in the process so that I always had a practical and informed point of view.” That meant that in addition to learning to art direct, he also learned how to write radio ads and headlines, edit, animate, direct, illustrate,
