40 Under 40 2021: Lucie Jansen, Spark Foundry

Lucie Jansen

National head of investment
Spark Foundry
Australia

Starting her career as a TV buyer in London nearly 18 years ago, Lucie Jansen quickly developed a passion for investment, negotiations and the world of media. Her career since has taken her around the world with roles in Sydney, Hong Kong and London.

After deciding it was time to push herself into her first national role, Jansen joined the leadership team at Blue449 Australia in 2018. Less than a year after she joined, Blue449 merged with Spark Foundry, and Jansen played a key role in merging the two companies and the development of the agency that Spark is today. Two years after the merger, Jansen now leads a national investment product and a team of 40 across more than 60 clients and three markets.

In the past 12 months, Jansen has been key to the growth of Spark, leading the investment element on all pitches, ultimately resulting in an 80% conversion rate and a billings increase of $200 million. In addition to a slew of new account wins, billings across the agency’s top five clients have also increased by 12%. Meanwhile, Jansen has been growing and developing her activation team across three markets, more than doubling headcount.

When Jansen started her career nearly 20 years ago, ‘empathy’ wasn’t considered necessary, but rather a barrier to getting things done. Today Jansen focuses her efforts in the opposite direction. Her team’s health and happiness are her first priority, and she encourages this perspective at every level. She is a certified mental-health first aider for Spark and strongly promotes the Publicis Groupe’s approach to mental-health support. Jansen champions a mindset of learning from mistakes rather than focusing on the mistake itself. It appears to be working, as Spark has not only increased its client satisfaction results, but seen its staff happiness results rise by 11% over the past year.

Beyond her role at Spark, Jansen enjoys being a mentor for the Media Federation of Australia’s NGen initiative, where she guides group discussions and inspires junior members of the industry. She is also a mentor for a senior media agency person from outside of the Publicis Groupe as she has a keen passion for the industry and retaining and developing those within it.