The Best Gifts CEOs Have Ever Received

Priya Patel, Lee Leggett, Margie Reid, Justin Graham, and Angela Watson share the best objects and pieces of advice they’ve ever received with ��’s Brittney Rigby, from roller skates to perfume, fruit to Bill Murray

In the lead up to Christmas, �� AUNZ is asking , creatives, CEOs, marketers, directors, and music and sound practitioners to share the best gift they’ve ever received - an object, piece of advice or training, or person they’ve worked with. Here’s what CEOs shared with ��’s Brittney Rigby.

A set of roller skates. Perfume. A Christmas movie recommendation on Netflix. A box of fruit from FINCH. These are a few of agency CEOs’ favourite Christmas gifts.

In the early 80s, Xanadu was big, and CHEP CEO Lee Leggett wanted to be Olivia Newton-John. When she got a pair of roller skates, The Roller Disco at Coventry swimming pool in England became the place to be on a Friday night.

“With my crimped hair up in a pony to show off my new Benetton t-shirt, I’d glide through neon lights, too scared to talk to any of the boys I liked, waiting for the DJ to do the inevitable reverse call out where everyone changed direction and then fell over, all in the hope that the collision would spark a conversation.”

Lee's current skates

It wasn’t really about the roller skates, she says, “but the way they opened up a whole new world of dreams and adventure.” She owned multiple pairs of skates over the years, “always quads”, and bought a new pair during COVID lockdowns.

“Now, I’ve passed the gift of skating on to my daughter - who was born on the 23rd of December, so she should probably be the real best gift - and with our matching skates, we’ve started our own little roller disco legacy.”

Lee's daughter Miller and Lee skating during lockdown

Priya Patel loves scent - perfumes and candles, lotions and washes. “For the hair, face, or feet. Oud or floral, oriental or citrusy. Am here for it all,” she says.

“If I didn’t work in advertising, I think I’d have been a ‘nose’ for a perfumery.” Every year at Christmas-time, her husband Russell Hopson - an advertising exec himself who’s formerly led adam&eve/DDB in London and M&C Saatchi in Sydney as MD - heads into local beauty retailer Mecca, ready for the staff to “pitch him the latest and greatest beauty products.”

The result? “An amazing stocking filled with new and wonderfully smelly things.” Priya references a quote from Helen Keller: “‘Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived’, and so I’m always really excited to get my big red sock of memories and inspiration for the year ahead.”

Margie Reid’s agency, Thinkerbell, got a smelly gift of its own one year. Each Christmas, production company FINCH sends the agency an “amazing box of fruit.”

“It's always a surprise as to what fruit it is and a delicious goodie we can all share,” she says.

“There was one year when the box arrived after the office shut for Christmas, and let's just say by the time we came back three weeks later, there were some happy fruit flies!”

Justin Graham, meanwhile, loves a recommendation. “That hidden restaurant down the hill, the live recording on vinyl from the forgotten concert in Tokyo, simply taking a back street, or an obscure podcast about cows.” So when a colleague told M&C Saatchi’s APAC chief about a new Christmas movie he’d never watched, “I was all in.”

“In the office on the last day of work, wrapping up another year and debating with that colleague the merits of ‘The Holiday’ vs ‘Love Actually’, ‘Home Alone vs ‘National Lampoons’, even ‘Die Hard’ vs ‘Die Harder’, she said, ‘Have you seen 'A Very Murray Christmas' on Netflix?’ Being a Christmas guy in a family of Christmasy people, I thought I had seen them all. Maybe not?

“It is a doco, of sorts. Set in the city where I have had some of my best Christmases ever, New York. It features Bill Murray in a snowstorm, with Maya Rudolph, Any Poehler, Chris Rock, Michael Cera, the lead singer from the NY Dolls (playing himself, as a waiter), George Clooney, and Miley Cyrus.”

It’s become a late-night Christmas Eve ritual for Justin and his wife.

“It's that moment in time when the holidays begin,” he says. “So, a grumpy Bill Murray on Christmas Eve was the perfect gift. And now I am giving it to you.”

Angela Watson, Colenso BBDO's CEO, tells the story of a gift received not once, but twice, 44 years apart.

"Aged 11, my mother took me to a toyshop and told me I could choose anything," she remembers.

"Why she did this, I don’t know, but it was such a thrill. I chose a Lego Harley Davidson police motorcycle. Go figure. Maybe because it was the era of CHIPs and I had a crush on Erik Estrada. A couple of years ago, I rifled through the mountain of Lego acquired since then, and found every single piece, bar one, and remade it. I can’t tell you how satisfying this was and how it took me back to every detail of that day so long ago."