OC in Profile: Leo Coates (OC 2002) & Tim Knoblanche (OC 2007)
Next time you pop into a McDonald’s, have a closer look at the digital self-order kiosks or the glowing screens with the menus behind the counter, because they’re the work of an Old Cranbrookian – and, in fact, a team that includes many other Old Cranbrookians.
When Leo Coates (OC 2002) bought signage company Coates Group from his father in 2008, he became the CEO of a proud family business that had begun with his grandmother and grew as it created the physical signs for huge brands like Woolworths and McDonald’s. But much like the golden arches Coates Group had installed across the country, it was hard to miss the signs of the approaching global technological revolution, so Leo knew he had to take his company into the 21st century.
“First of all, we knew we needed to grow the traditional business and become a global player, so we set up manufacturing in China and Taiwan,” Leo says. “Then we reinvested all of our profits back into digital. And we made a ton of mistakes along the way, but we knew it was inevitable that we had to go into digital software and hardware.”
The shift to digital has played a big part in the company’s success, as has one of the other big moves Leo Coates took early on as CEO. He knew he wanted to recruit people he trusted, and the first place he turned was Cranbrook. It wasn’t about giving jobs to friends; it was about tapping into networks he knew he could rely on.
“It was as much about them trusting us, as the business trusting them. But secondly it was about the calibre of the individuals,” Leo explains. “Had we gone to market, we would not have been able to attract people at that level or with those smarts and that much potential. And I think a lot of that has to do with the environment Cranbrook always invited, which was a great education platform, great teachers, and fantastic relationships.”
Coates Group has now grown to about 500 staff, with offices around the world, and huge contracts using technology to bring interactivity and flexibility to traditional signage locations. The deal for the McDonald’s digital menu boards and self-order kiosks in Australia led to a rollout across Asia as well. Then came the massive opportunity to do the hardware for all 12,000 McDonald’s drive-throughs in the US, before winning the global McDonald’s deal for signage software and hardware in almost every market around the world!
Being clear about the purpose, working with the right partners along the way, and being clear on what success looks like, I think is really important.
Leo Coates (OC 2002)
It’s a long way from the printed menu boards Coates Group was doing in Australia in the 1970s. Now, it all involves a content management system called Switchboard that the Coates team built, using advanced software to serve ‘smart merchandising’ to customers.
“It’s about showing the online world in bricks and mortar, where it’s about data driven products, showing the right product at the right time, and things like loyalty. It’s localised to restaurants, and it’s personalised to the individual customer,” Leo explains.
Since Leo took over, more than a dozen Old Cranbrookians have worked for Coates Group, and there are currently nine on staff, including Tim Knoblanche (OC 2007), who joined in 2017.
He was running automation projects in Commonwealth Bank branches when he was brought in by Leo to be the head of strategy, with the genesis of their relationship formed in the boarding house where Tim was in Year 7 when Leo was Head of Rawson.
“One of the great things about Cranbrook is it has that intergeneration within your time at
school, so you treat everyone with that mutual respect,” Tim says.
Within a month of joining Coates Group, Tim was spending about half his time in Chicago, and he ended up moving there for four years to work directly with clients and set up operations in Europe. During his time in the US, Coates Group won huge contracts with companies like restaurant chain Starbucks, and Inspire, which owns brands like Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, and Dunkin’. After coming back home during the pandemic, Tim was appointed as Chief Technology Officer.
“I’m not a traditional technology type person,” Tim explains, “but the more senior you get, it’s more about your ability to manage a team, set a clear strategy, communicate that strategy, and manage the teams to those objectives.”
Looking into the near future, Tim Knoblanche sees improvements in automation as one of the big trends that is likely to emerge in the digital space, particularly in terms of handling the challenge of an increasing amount of data. Using artificial intelligence to cleanse and sort all that information into ways that businesses can then use it to innovate will be a big priority, for example. But Tim’s advice for most companies as they continue to digitise their operations and products is to always remember the basics.
“There’s a lot of technology out there that’s technology for technology’s sake and it’s not actually targeting a specific use case in the market. What’s really important ultimately is the reason why you would want to invest in technology is because it should be more effective and efficient than what you have prior.”
You can see examples of that approach at the headquarters of Coates Group in the Sydney suburb of Alexandria, where the foyer is a showcase of some of the company’s most important work, including a mockup of a McDonald’s drive-thru, and a working digital self-order kiosk (although unfortunately you won’t get any burgers from it). But there are also still old-fashioned physical signs – because in many circumstances still today, that’s the most iconic identifier of the brand.
“We are still a proud signage business, and we’re still very proud to say we’re an Aussie business,” declares Leo Coates. “An Aussie business that’s gone global.”
That Aussie pride was never stronger than when Coates was selected as the signage provider in the reintroduction of Ampol, an iconic Australian brand, into the country’s petrol scene in 2021. The signage rollout was completed at the close of 2022 and encompassed 1700 sites across Australia and the design and manufacture of nearly 60,000 signage products.
From buying the solely traditional signage business at age 24, to transforming it into a digital powerhouse, and securing global deals with some of the world’s most famous brands, it’s been an epic ride for Leo so far. He genuinely credits his decision to hire employees from his Cranbrook network as one of the keys to the success of Coates Group, but beyond that it’s also about focus.
“Being clear about the purpose, working with the right partners along the way, and being clear on what success looks like, I think is really important. And that’s applicable, not just in digital, but in any strategy that you’re looking at from a business standpoint.”
And, as the digital world extends into more parts of our daily life, you’ll likely be seeing even more of Coates Group. You could call it a sign of the times.
