by Herman Manson (@marklives) McCann Worldgroup SA has reunited Fraser Lamb and Mick Blore, group CEO and chief creative officer of the group respectively, in a bid to push the agency up the creative rankings.
Shared
It’s a left-brain/right-brain partnership, explains Blore. They share an office, and clients may talk to either one; decision-making power is shared. Both work across all companies in the group. It’s already having an effect, and the South African agency is expanding its reach into different sectors, as well as building up a new creative team.
Lamb and Blore worked in a similar partnership at Y&R South Africa for about three years. When Blore left in 2010, he started his own business, while Lamb went on to join McCann. They reunited in August 2015.
According to Blore, while McCann is a solid business, it has enjoyed a fairly average reputation within the ad industry. He and Lamb aim to raise the standard of creative work, plus win new business. To start with, he has employed an entirely new creative team while the business has also been restructured. Strategy, digital and creative sit in the same space to ensure a more-integrated approach, he says.
African hub
South Africa serves as the African hub for McCann Worldwide, says Lamb, and is currently active in 37 markets. The McCann network (part of IPG) has two holding entities in Africa.
The first is MWG SA Pty Ltd which looks after SA. Within this group sits McCann (advertising and branding), UM (media strategy, planning and buying), Weber Shandwick (public relations and public affairs), McCann Health (specialist healthcare communications) and Truth Central (research and strategy).
Then there is MWG Africa Pty Ltd,which is responsible for all the rest of Africa. MWG SA reports into MWG Africa. Within MWG Africa, there are six hubs and 31 spokes, currently. In the rest of Africa (excluding SA), there are McCann (five hubs/31 spokes), UM (five hubs/four spokes) and Weber Shandwick (seven offices). A hub is a fully fledged agency offering, while a spoke is, by and large, an implementation company (although sometimes a spoke may also be a fully fledged agency).
McCann’s African hubs sit in Côte d’Ivoire (Francophone hub managing French-speaking West Africa), Nigeria (Anglo West African hub managing Sierra Leone and Ghana), Kenya (Anglo East African hub), Angola (Lusophone hub basically managing Portuguese-speaking Africa), Mauritius (Indian Ocean island hub and SA (SA and controlling hub).
“Digital catalyst”
Lamb explains the group does not have a digital agency “as digital is throughout what we do. In other words, each of our agencies has digital capability. We simply have a digital catalyst whose job it is to drive the upskilling and development of our digital capability across the group and territory.”
McCann’s African partners are not owned; the agency makes use of affiliate agreements. Its health division, McCann Health, is its quickest growing unit on the continent.
Truth Central, McCann Worldgroup’s global thought-leadership unit, has been operating in SA since 2012. It tracks consumer shifts and trends which are sourced from 50 participating offices. Lamb says it offers the agency a substantial competitive advantage, giving it access to global and local insight.
Blore is measuring his and Fraser’s success in terms of agency reputation, work that proves itself and new business wins. So far, he is happy on all three scores. He is especially happy that globally aligned clients, which include MasterCard and Chevrolet, are now commissioning work in SA for the first time in years. Recent new client wins includes brands from Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Musa Capital and Endless Jewellery. Its five biggest clients are Nestlé, General Motors, L’Oreal (L’Oreal Paris and Maybelline), MasterCard and Zurich.
Growth in profit
According to Lamb, more important than growth in revenue is growth in profit — PR, media and digital offer margins up to three times than those of ATL work, and this is where the agency is growing. The digital team is doubling in size, year-on-year. Currently, the agency employs 139 personnel. Agency achievements he hopes to unlock in the year ahead.
Fraser says, now that he and Blore are back together as a team, they will aim to reposition McCann in line with its parent company in the SA market. New business is also a core focus, with a host of pitches underway.
“We would love to be on the awards table and to deliver a body of work by the end of this year that surprises the industry and builds our reputation locally,” says Lamb. “We pride ourselves on being a great network citizen of our global company and want to achieve creative-hub status by close of business in December 2016.”
Needs work
Having said that, Lamb is the first to admit the McCann’s reputation in the local markets needs work. “We know how good we are but our reputation needs work,” he says. “This can only be achieved through our work and this is our priority. Let the work do the talking and clients will come.
“These are tough times in SA but we have built the best team and are seeing the signs earlier than we had hoped for. We do integration better than most and have the insights to deliver truth well-told. Producing work that works has never been more sought-after in these trying times in SA. This is what we do. This is our mission. More than that, we help brands play a meaningful role in people’s lives…”
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com. He was the inaugural Vodacom Social Media Journalist of the Year in 2011 and has, over his 20-year-plus career, contributed to numerous journals and websites in South Africa and abroad, including AdVantage magazine, Men’s Health, Computer World and African Communications.
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