The global studio has just appointed a chairperson. That’s a bit unusual, so we took a deep dive with them into why and how their new structure can help them stay honest.
When creative studios take private equity investment, the industry braces for the inevitable: streamlined processes, cost efficiencies, and that slow erosion of the very culture that made them attractive in the first place. Koto, though, is attempting something different.
Following private equity firm WestBridge’s investment earlier this year, the five-studio agency has appointed Charles Fallon as its first chairperson. Not to accelerate growth at any cost, but to protect what made them worth investing in.
If you’re thinking that ‘chairperson’ is an unfamiliar role in the design world, you’re not wrong. But that’s precisely the point. “I’ve chaired a number of creative businesses over the years, and it’s a discipline that can help studios prepare and deliver growth,” Charles explains. With over 15 years of international agency experience—including a decade at Saatchi & Saatchi—and two decades in M&A advisory through his co-founded firm SI Global, he brings a perspective that extends beyond the quarterly targets that typically follow investment.
For James Greenfield, Koto’s chief executive, this new appointment addresses a fundamental tension in scaling creative businesses. “Most companies are growth or product first; Koto is people first,” he says. “In making that promise, you are protecting your people, but also your product, as the two are intertwined.”
The governance advantage
What’s particularly interesting about Charles’s appointment is the timing. Operating across Berlin, London, Los Angeles, New York and Sydney, Koto now has 19 shareholders. That complexity alone demands formal governance, but Charles’s remit extends further into the cultural preservation work that founders usually guard jealously.
“The question I always ask when joining a business is ‘Why are you successful?’,” he says. “As an investor in my own right, it’s critical to understand what makes a team successful, both the cultural DNA and capabilities. Simply, mess with these at your peril.”
It’s a blunt acknowledgement of where growth typically fails creative businesses. The pattern is depressingly familiar: acquire talent, impose systems, watch the best people leave, wonder why the work deteriorated. Charles’s experience, though, spans enough failed expansions to recognise the warning signs. “My role is to reinforce this brilliance, protect it even, and ensure the leadership develop the skills and resources to continue the growth and build the Koto legacy,” he explains.
For James, having that external perspective provides cover for decisions that might otherwise look like resistance to growth. “A chair for me as chief executive is all about guidance,” he outlines. “Charles has seen so many creative businesses and all the challenges they and we face before; having that person to help guide and inform is invaluable.”
It’s the kind of statement that sounds obvious until you consider how many founders lack anyone to say no to their investors’ every demand.
From a client perspective, these changes should, of course, be imperceptible, at least initially. “I don’t envisage any change at first,” James says. “We are already working with the world’s biggest brands, so we are set up for all their challenges and changes, and not ours. But over time, I imagine more products and services will be available to them.”
It’s a measured response that acknowledges the pressure to demonstrate return on investment, whilst resisting the urge to over-promise transformation.
Culture at scale
The real test, though, will be whether Koto can maintain cultural coherence across five cities and whatever acquisitions follow. Again, Charles’s experience building global teams will be crucial here.
“As you scale, it’s critical to double down on the human aspects—regular in-person meetings, constant connectivity, sharing success and investment in a diverse team,” he believes. This might sound like an expensive and unfashionable approach in an era of remote-first operation. But in practice, it might well be the only way to prevent the fragmentation that typically follows geographic expansion.
James also emphasises the importance of systematic communication; “having a strong strategy, a vision that people buy into. Empowered leadership teams that have autonomy to get things done. Learning from other global agencies and what they got right and wrong.” That last point is telling. The agency graveyard is full of cautionary tales, and Koto seems determined to study them.
Why does this matter
For the rest of us watching this unfold, the experiment matters beyond Koto’s success or failure. It’s going to be a compelling case study of whether formal governance can really protect creative culture during expansion, or whether it’s simply a more sophisticated way of managing the inevitable decline.
For now, Koto has bought itself the rarest commodity in private equity-backed creative businesses: time to figure out how to scale without breaking what made them worth scaling in the first place. And success, for James, remains firmly anchored in purpose rather than metrics.
He hopes that “we maintain our rational optimism for the world and our ability to influence that where we are relevant. We build brands and digital experiences that make the world a better place, and we do that through the pursuit of excellence.” Whether that philosophy will survive contact with quarterly board meetings will be fascinating to see.
​Â
