Saatchi & Saatchi began decades ago as an advertising partnership between two British brothers. Today, its New York executive team of CEO Mary Baglivo and her chief creative officer Tony Granger continues that “fraternal” tradition.

The two have been in charge of Madison Avenue’s third largest agency since 2004. Symbolically, they share a glass boardroom that links their two spacious white-on-white offices in Greenwich Village.

Mrs. Baglivo is one of the industry’s highest-ranking women and a well-tailored executive who runs the business side of the operation. Her partner, Mr. Granger, is a chirpy South African who dresses in black jeans and jokingly refers to himself as a “failed musician.”

“This has been important for the transformation of the agency.You need strong, inspirational, creative leadership to collaborate with the business leader. We finish each other’s sentences,” he said.

Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide is a giant ad agency with 134 offices in 84 countries and 7,000 employees. The Saatchi brothers pioneered public ownership of an industry that had been characterized by entrepreneurship. But in 1995, they were ousted and five years later their namesake firm became part of the Publicis Group holding company out of Paris.

By 2004, the New York operation had problems and Mrs. Baglivo and Mr. Granger were recruited to turn things around. Within days of joining, the two were immediately challenged by a defection of 17 Saatchi managers who were upset at the resignation of their predecessor.

Despite the initial setback, they have been able to grow revenues, profits, and the client list. New clients include J.C. Penney, Sony Ericsson, financial services firm Ameriprise, pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis and Bristol Myers, and technology, telephone, fashion and retail outfits such as BASF.

It’s not bad for a big boat turnaround,” she said. “We have become nimble and can offer deep strategic insights, global reach. Clients want this.” Mrs. Baglivo is responsible for New York and all of Canada, and has a seat on Saatchi’s Worldwide Executive Board. Mr. Granger, who has won dozens of industry creative awards, sees his job as a sort of cheerleader.

“The challenge is to keep spontaneity in the work as we go through the long process of doing it, tweaking it and focusing, then changing. It’s very hard to keep enthusiasm and freshness,” he said.

Their business cards describe Saatchi as an ideas company not an ad agency.

“Advertising is a small element,” said Mr. Granger.”Ideas come first then we create whatever is needed to drive that idea. That means we also create products.”

For instance, he said Saatchi worked closely with General Mills to create a new line of snacks based on market research.

Another interesting collaboration involved Folgers Coffee, which is the top selling coffee in America.”They wanted to attract younger consumers to Folgers as a point of entry from Starbucks,” she said. “We decided that coffee was part of waking up and making the mornings tolerable. We decided not to use paid media so we created neat screen savers, personal wake-up calls. These were picked up on the blogosphere and YouTube and the mainstream media. It was viral and successful.”

This was about ideas, not about advertising. In essence, the two have reshaped an advertising agency into a marketing consultant for use by clients.The team has also reconstituted its revenue strategy.The old business model involved agencies earning 15% or so of the value of advertisements or commercials placed with media.

“The compensation models these days vary.There’s payment based on a percentage of sales, fees or even by receiving stock in start-ups which is not common,” she said.”We like incentive compensation a lot because we have skin in the game and it’s based on achievement of results.”

The business is also changing in other ways. Some industry experts believe women will eventually dominate marketing which means that there will be more Mary Baglivos.

“Women will continue to be the ones that buy the consumer goods but in addition their purchases of autos and technology are going way up,” she said. “There are more women chief information officers in companies and the chief marketing officer population includes many more women. Twenty years ago there were none.It’s definitely changing.”