Inside SmartFrame: Simon Pitney

Agency Group Head Simon discusses his start in the ad world, the biggest misconception around what advertisers actually need, and his passions outside the office

How did you get started in the ad world?

After I left university, I realized I didn’t want to live in Plymouth, which is where my family was. I had a girlfriend from London, so I decided to move there as quickly as possible – and there were lots of advertising jobs available.

I applied for one and got it, and quickly realized it wasn’t that difficult once you get over yourself and remember you’re just talking in public. Initially, I thought I was only going to do it for 18 months before figuring out what I really wanted to do, but 25 years later, I’m still doing the same thing!

My first job was at The Independent, where I stayed for four years and actually met my wife. From there, I was headhunted by The Mirror, worked at a recruitment consultancy, and eventually spent several years at both Northern & Shell and Reach.

What drew you to the technology side of the industry?

For about 14 years, I was successfully selling products that I didn’t necessarily believe in or feel particularly proud of. I was happily selling stuff, but there wasn’t a real sense of pride there.

When I looked at SmartFrame, I saw that the product was genuinely brilliant, and I fully believe in the proposition. All three sides of the business model make complete sense to me. I clearly understand where we fit in, what our unique selling point is, and how we can offer real, tangible value to brands and publishers. It is incredibly refreshing to represent a tangible product that I can honestly stand behind.

What does your role at SmartFrame look like day-to-day?

I’m only about seven weeks in, so a large part of my day currently involves outreach, learning the technology, and meeting people.

I don’t really have a set routine where I do specific tasks on specific days. My diary is entirely flexible to accommodate whoever I am trying to get hold of. If someone tells me they are only free for a quick coffee on a Tuesday at 4:00 PM, or on a Monday, I make sure I am there.

I also make a point to spend a few days a week in town simply seeing people and evangelizing the product. You can’t rely purely on digital output – you really need that human interaction.

What’s the biggest misconception you encounter about what advertisers actually need?

There is a constant challenge in the industry trying to balance the needs of content providers, publishers, and advertising agencies. We all understand that the internet needs advertising in order to remain free, but users are increasingly frustrated by websites that are just flooded with ads.

Consumers are so used to being bombarded that they almost just want to find the “x” as quickly as possible to close the ad and read the content. Because of this ad blindness, the industry has to realize that simply placing an ad isn’t enough anymore. Driving genuine, measurable attention is the metric everyone is increasingly obsessed with.

What advice would you give someone looking to get into advertising?

Put down your mobile phone and learn to be present in the room. The only way you achieve lasting success in this job is by getting people to want to talk to you, which means picking up on commonalities and finding little hooks that you can reference the next time you see them.

You have to learn how to have a genuine back-and-forth dialogue and pick up on human cues, not just buying signals. Ultimately, everyone knows you want to sell them something, but they also want to be seen as fully developed people with outside interests. If you take the time to genuinely see and listen to them, they are far more likely to give you their time going forward.

What’s changed most in the industry over the course of your career?

On the publisher side, sales units have shrunk massively, meaning fewer people are doing much more. Where you used to just sell newspapers, you now have to sell podcasts, apps, programmatic digital imagery, and direct buys. Because everyone is spinning so many different plates, people have had to become generalists rather than specialists.

On the agency side, there has been a massive headlong rush toward automation. People are increasingly happy to hide behind a keyboard and handle their interactions digitally. It is much tougher now to pull people out of their busy schedules for a natural human interaction – like grabbing a couple of pints at the pub to talk through a thorny issue – which makes relationship-building a bit of a lost art.

Is there a project or partnership you’re particularly proud of?

I am incredibly proud of my involvement with Generation Valuable, a pilot scheme connected to the Valuable 500. It’s an initiative where 75 companies around the world committed to elevating their disabled workforce into key decision-making roles.

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When I was at Reach, I was selected to participate, and my CEO mentored me for a year. We did a lot of great work, including getting all the Reach titles to increase their disability coverage, developing tagging and content trees that opened up new audiences, as well as helping build an accessibility board to assist in redesigning our digital platforms. For a long time, I felt I was just selling boxes with ads, so doing socially conscious work that actually tried to make the world a slightly better place is definitely my proudest career achievement.

How do you see the future of publishing, especially with AI reshaping how content is made and distributed?

The industry is always chasing the next buzzword. In 2025, every media agency was obsessed with “contextual relevance,” and now it seems the obsession has shifted entirely to “attention”. Eventually, there will be something else that takes its place.

When it comes to AI specifically, using it as a blanket coverage term instantly turns people off. We saw this when massive agencies put AI at the center of their story without explaining what it actually meant for individual departments. To get real buy-in, you can’t just throw the word around; you have to demonstrate specific, practical benefits and show how it maturely applies to the business structure.

How do you switch off when you’re not working?

I’ve been married for almost 18 years and have a 14-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son, so family life naturally keeps me very busy. But to truly switch off, I am obsessed with two things: literature and the NFL.

I always have a book in my hand, even if it’s just to read a few pages while waiting at the doctor’s office. I admit I’m a bit of a snob about what I read. I stick mostly to classics, award-winners, and historical novels, with my all-time favorite being One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I’m also deeply passionate about American football. Even after 18 years as a fan, I’m still learning new things every Sunday, which challenges my brain in a way that watching standard football no longer does.