A return to full service? What is M&C Saatchi’s plan in supercharging its strategy unit?
M&C Saatchi now has one of the biggest strategy departments in Australia as it moves to a more ‘full service’ approach for brands. Miranda Ward sat down with the agency’s head of strategy Justin Graham to talk through the strategy behind it.
M&C Saatchi has made no secret of the fact it has been beefing up its strategy and planning department over the last 12 months, however many in the industry were surprised to hear the agency’s latest hire, Ross Berthinussen as group strategy director, had swelled the ranks of the team to 35. It’s a move which has many wondering whether the agency is looking to put the genie back in the bottle and go ‘full service’.
“If clients are coming to us to solve business problems we want to be able to solve whatever problem that may be through the lens of creativity,” said department head Justin Graham.
“And it’s not just advertising problems that get advertising solutions, that’s where we have a point of differentiation in the market that we’re all sitting here together in a central unit and we can deploy the resources as needed around those problems,” Graham said when quizzed on if the beefed up strategy department signalled a change in the agency’s positioning.
“So yes, full service, working with our clients. Full service can mean anything these days, it might be new retail environments, it might be a social strategy or an implementation of that, it might be community management or brand design.”
The agency has not skimped on the talent it has gone after either, with Berthinussen coming from BBH London, hot on the heels of the agency picking up Kate Smithers in a similar role from Ogilvy & Mather in London.
Led by Graham, who joined M&C from Droga5 at the end of last year, the strategy team now stands at 35, which includes 11 members of the innovation unit led by Ben Cooper.
It emerged during the hotly contested Commonwealth Bank media pitch earlier this year that the strictly ‘traditional’ creative agency had ambitions in the media space, signalling its shifting positioning by throwing its hat into the ring as a contender. The move led to speculation that the agency was moving towards a full-service offering, with the beefed up the strategy department fuelling the rumours.
But Graham remained coy when asked whether the agency is looking to hire media buyers.
“I think we’re all running towards what channel neutrality means for people,” he said.
“We need smart channel thinkers in here and we’ll continue to think about what the means. Clients are leaning on us and asking for help and asking for us to lean in and work with the channel strategists that exist within media organisations because the lines are very much blurred.
“The interesting thing is where we are now. It’s not about media people coming into a creative agency or vice versa, it’s actually about forming a new way of working,” Graham continued.
“For us, we have one very simple tool that we work with from a strategy point of view and that’s getting down to a brutal, simplicity of truth. It’s something that started right from Maurice (Saatchi, founder of M&C Saatchi) and the guys when they started the company and how that brutal simplicity of thought should be able to transcend a creative idea, a channel idea, whatever it might be.
“The ideas we have in this business, the contagious ideas that we have been able to deliver, are as much about content as they are about context and we’ve the thinking to go and do that now.
“We’ll just continue to push where the opportunities are,” Graham added.
Coming into the agency in January, Graham spent time with CEO Jaimes Leggett and executive creative director Ben Welch in examining what the agency needed from its strategy department.
“There’s a lot of very strategic creative directors here and that’s exciting to work with. But, what we didn’t have was enough of the spark, enough of the rigour, enough of the forward thinking so we’d be steps ahead in terms of trends, business analysis, analysing data, whatever it might be to start in a better place and work with clients on more than just advertising problems,” he said.
“Coming to M&C Saatchi there was a big challenge, it was really recognised in this market as a really consistent operation. It’s done some brilliant work over the years, it knows how to make some big brand platforms and protect those platforms.
“Some great creative and account management but probably just not well known in the industry for its strategic offering, which is unusual because globally M&C Saatchi is known as being a great strategic agency,” Graham said.
He continued: “It was to say if clients are coming to us to solve business problems and those business problems are fairly meaty considering we work on some of the biggest brands in the country, certainly the most valuable brand in the country in Commbank, right down to some small brands that are looking for that leadership, then what would a talent pool look like that could work together on that.”
It was this that sparked the recent hiring spree to swell the strategic ranks.
“It’s been a real mix of bringing people together, and yes we have hired a number of strategists. I think we have picked up an unfair share of the best global talent, from a strategy perspective, coming in here,” Graham said.
“But that’s purposeful as well because we have significant pieces of business that provide genuine challenges and I’ve been able to attract people who’ve been able to push what is a strategy offering in a big organisation these days.”
The massing of ranks has seen the formation of a central strategy unit within the M&C Saatchi group of agencies, able to work across the various agencies under the M&C Saatchi umbrella including Re, Sports and Entertainment, Lida and Mark.
“M&C Saatchi has ten agencies sitting within these walls, with some core specialisations,” Graham said.
“What we’ve been able to do is say we’ve got a central strategy unit, a central creative unit and a central production unit. And the central strategy unit is where we house everyone who is thinking strategically around pieces of business whether they’re brand planners or experience strategists or data strategists.
“We have a strong customer engagement strategy offering which is coming through Lida, we have brand strategists in the purer sense, a number of people sitting within Re, our brand design agency. Then we have social strategists as well as social and content people,” he summed up.
Whilst the most recent additions to the strategy team have come from overseas – with Berthinussen being English and Smithers returning home after a long stint overseas – Graham is adamant it is not a sign of a lack of strategic talent locally.
“I’m the vice chair of the APG (Account Planning Group) and I think there are some brilliant strategists here, some really pragmatic strategists,” he said when asked on the issue.
“There were a couple of needs we went after and it’s always great when you have an Australian who wants to come home in the form of Kate Smither, or Sophie Ales and Ross Berthinussen is the BBH veteran and he’s the one who wanted to come to Australia.
“We’ve also hired a number of strategists from agencies here. Certainly, we’ve tipped more to the local market than globally. Part of this is we work with some big, iconic Australian brands,” Graham said.
Miranda Ward
If you’re having strategy problems I feel bad for you son
You got 35 strategists but a good idea ain’t come from one.
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I don’t think there is a lack of strategic ability (and perceived recognition of such) across the agency landscape, rather an unsophisticated market of clients to whom the term strategy often means everything that it isn’t, and nothing that it is. Therefore, knowing how to judge it’s robustness as a means to an end is simply too hard…afterall, they can’t ‘see’ it in the first instance, and struggle to differentiate it from tactics. But that doesn’t stop the criticism that the agencies can’t deliver it.
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I applaud the above.
M&C need to brush the dirt off their shoulder and come back with a riposte…
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#damnson
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M&C have just won B&T & Campaign APac agency of the year plus a truckload or creative & innovation awards in recent weeks so don’t think they’re doing too bad
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“For us, we have one very simple tool that we work with from a strategy point of view and that’s getting down to a brutal, simplicity of truth.”
I hope their new strategy is to stop talking in riddles.
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M&C is a great agency.
It has ever base covered from ads to analytics.
It has managed the leadership transition brilliantly
Its worst work is never bad
Its made CommBank, Optus and NRMA synonymous with Can, Yes and Better
In other words, it doesn’t just claim Brutally Simple, it delivers on it.
It makes money
It treats its staff well
It’s a credit to our industry and deserves all the success that comes its way.
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What’s the best thing to say to who, where, when and how often?
Does finding that out really require spending millions on stupid salaries?
The strategy industry is the biggest con in advertising.
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an observation….
subtlety is clearly not your strong point. when you work with or for a company on improving their reputation via online comments and other activities…you’re not supposed to make it so obvious
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I don’t work for M&C in any form and never have.
I’m actually a competitor. Trust me, I’d pay good
money to be up against anyone but M&C in a pitch.
They are a grown-up, ad business.
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this is an anon message board so we have to take people at their word….but it’s pretty rich a competitor thinking they’ve made NRMA synonymous with Better when the campaign has been out there for about five minutes
and there are at least two others on (fairly certain the post would get blocked) there that I won’t post on that are pretty much polar opposites to what people in the know would claim
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Simply making a brand synonymous with one word through disrupting our lives ad infinitum doesn’t solve any actually problems.
Yes, Can, Love and Better are not brand positionings, they’re merely devices that enable a whole bunch of rational messages to look and feel similar. They don’t make people trust or remember these messages any better than they would the average toothpaste or shampoo ad.
The success of Optus and Commbank come from great improvements in service and has little to do with the ad campaigns.
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It seems to be only this market where “brutal simplicity of thought” translates to meaningless one word tag lines that do nothing but make people hate advertising that little bit more than they did before.
The success of the M&C factory is merely a sad reflection on the quality of Australian marketers.
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A few points:
• A good brief is only good if it delivers a good ad.
• Stop using creative departments to work out what your brief is.
• A good brief is only good if it delivers a good ad.
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Just got around to reading this. Congratulations Justin – taking strategy seriously is a great step towards ensuring your agency has a great future.
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I couldn’t agree more, the amount clients spend on “strategy” telling them how to think and plan, add the magic of Pitch Doctors who tell them which agencies to like, plus “relationship management” like Appraise telling them whether or not they “get on” with said agency and to top it off – research upon research to tell them what creative to go with.
It makes me wonder what the F@#! clients actually do themselves these days.
However, “planning” has replaced creative as one of the few billable profit-makers left for agencies nowadays, so no wonder they’re all pumping it up.
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Kudos, Juz.
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