Advantage Solutions’ Tanya Domier nearly turned down a job leading one of Orange County’s largest private companies.
She was president of Advantage’s marketing division when founder Sonny King suggested the promotion in 2007.
“I said, ‘I have no interest in being a CEO—I have three little boys and a husband, and there’s an appreciable difference between being the No. 3 person in the company, which I am today, and the No. 1 person,” said Domier, who is our Business Person of the Year in the services category (see related stories, pages 1, 6, 8, 10 and 12).
The Irvine-based company, which closed 2015 with nearly $2 billion in revenue, provides sales, marketing, merchandising and digital technology services to packaged goods manufacturers and retailers.
Food makers such as a jelly brand, for example, hire Advantage to get their products to major retailers, and they might also ask for merchandising and category management services to make sure the product is diligently stocked on the shelf, or to find out what’s selling at what stores.
Sales Block
It was on the sales block back in 2010, when Domier reconsidered her situation.
The eventual buyer, London-based Apax Partners LLC, had one caveat: Domier had to be named as King’s successor for the deal to close.
“Sonny came back to me and said, ‘We need to move forward with the plan,’ and a few members of the board specifically said to me, ‘Tanya, you’re crazy. This is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity … you’re going to stay for the next deal anyways, why wouldn’t you want to be the CEO?’ And I went home, I talked to my family, and decided to throw my hat in the ring,” Domier said. “It was the best decision I ever made.”
She attributes her reluctance to take the job to a phenomenon Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg identified in “Lean In.”
“The basic premise of that book is, never in the history of mankind [has there] been a man who has been offered a promotion that said, ‘I’m not ready.’ And it is, unfortunately, a rather common trait of women who are offered the next spot to say, ‘Oh, I don’t think so, I’m not quite ready. I don’t want to. I have other priorities.’
“I had no aspirations to be a CEO—none … I didn’t ever question my strengths; it was very important to me to have a successful family. And I felt like I was in such a great position of juggling being a mom and a wife and the president of marketing that I felt like I was going to have to make tradeoffs in my family life to be able to get the top job, and it wasn’t worth it to me. What I didn’t realize is that there were no tradeoffs, because I already worked a ton. Being No. 1 wasn’t any harder than No. 3. It was just different. And in some ways it’s easier because you do have a little bit more control over your schedule. So it is interesting. I call myself an accidental CEO.”
Advantage had about $1.4 billion in revenue and had about 30,000 employees when Domier took over the top post on Jan. 1, 2013. Her achievements since then have earned her the Business Person of the Year honors in the services sector.
She led the company—which now has 40,000 employees and about 4,000 open positions—through a $4.2 billion sale in June 2014 to private equity firms Leonard Green & Partners LP and CVC Capital Partners.
Advantage took the latest change in ownership in stride as it turned in another impressive growth rate.
“We’ve been growing 15% each year since they’ve bought us,” Domier said. “They’ve been fantastic partners, great in collaboration, in helping leverage industry connections.”
The chief executive relied on the new owners’ expertise as Advantage embarked on an international expansion last year—Leonard Green has invested in numerous global brands, including watchmaker Tourneau Inc. in New York and apparel brands in the stables of Topshop/Topman Holdings Inc. in London and of Hong Kong-based Pure Group.
Smollan
Advantage acquired a 25% stake in Smollan Group in Johannesburg, South Africa, which gave it a foothold in Africa, the Middle East, South America, Australia and Asia. The two companies also formed Advantage Smollan, a joint venture that acquired UK-based REL Field Marketing in June.
“We’re opportunistic when it comes to acquisitions—we are interested in anything that can add value,” Domier said. “So you’ll just continue to see us be on the acquisition trail.”
Most recently, she led Advantage’s rebranding effort to reflect its transformation into a “best-in-class business services and solutions provider” with the addition of the Digital Technology Division this past summer. The company dropped its old name, Advantage Sales and Marketing LLC, and named its marketing arm Advantage Marketing Partners. The change puts several recent acquisitions under one umbrella and offers clients a choice to work with its in-house shopper marketing agency, IN Marketing, or with partner agencies.
“We made a number of acquisitions, and we built the businesses into collectively the No. 1 agency recognized by Advertising Age in the shopper marketing and experiential marketing (category), and we said, ‘We’re ready to bring them together under a common brand,’ and Advantage Marketing Partners makes so much sense because your partners help offer solutions,” Domier said. “It’s a way to market and demonstrate our ability to really provide services and solutions across all of those different marketing disciplines.”
Outsiders have also taken note of Domier’s strides.
“We expect [Advantage] will continue to benefit from new client and business wins, helping to offset the recent pull-back in spending by certain large [consumer packaged goods] manufacturers,” said New York-based Moody’s Investors Service.
