Fueling Creativity: The CFO’s Role

There’s been a lot of noise in the advertising industry lately, from restructuring to consolidation to massive financial recalibrations at the industry’s biggest companies. It’s easy, in moments like this, to frame finance people as the enemy of creativity, something I’ve been reading a lot of recently. I don’t buy that. To me, the issue isn’t financial leadership. It’s the posture that financial leaders take. In a creative business, the CFO doesn’t just manage the numbers. They influence behavior, and their actions shape culture and whether a company builds or simply protects. It shows how they engage: are they leaning into tough conversations, helping solve problems rather than simply measuring them, and making it clear that they stand behind the work? CFOs AS BUILDERS I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the best CFOs, and they are builders. They understand that a creative company is not a manufacturing business or a tech company. At a true creative agency, the greatest assets w