McCann’s new CEO Ben Lilley: the traditional agency model is dead
New McCann Australia CEO Ben Lilley
The boss of new-look McCann Australia, which merged with Smart last month, has said that “there is no future for traditional agencies in this market” after making sweeping changes to McCann’s management structure.
In a note to staff, Ben Lilley – CEO of Smart until the reverse take-over – said that the management roles of those who have left the agency – which include CEO Chris Mort, business strategy director Helen Karabassis and McCann Melbourne MD James Graham – would be replaced by strategic, digital and creative talent in the coming weeks.
These changes would mean more direct contact between clients and his staff, and a “leaner and faster” operating structure. He said: “We have the leadership, processes, structures and DNA of a creative independent, backed by global resources of the world’s largest agency network.”
He called on members of his team to recommend anyone who should be part of the “new McCann”.
Lilley’s note to staff, obtained by Mumbrella, read:
Team,
As you are aware, we have now completed a further and final round of staff structuring changes, following the merging of McCann and SMART earlier thismonth.
We did not originally anticipate these extra changes and I am sorry for the short-term disruption they may cause. Having spent the last 6 to 9 months though getting to know McCann from afar, and now a very intensive month inside the business, these are changes we now see as a necessary part of our reinvention and reinvigoration of McCann.
For too long, this business has continued to operate as a conventional and traditional agency while the advertising and marketing world rapidly evolves around it. This is not a sustainable operating model. There is no future for traditional agencies in this market, or anywhere else in the world. The traditional agency model – and the layers of management, cost and operating inefficiencies that are part of it – is dead.
Globally McCann is reinventing itself as a transformational agency with digital at the core, under the new leadership of CEO Nick Brien and Chief Creative Officer Linus Karlsson (who was also the co-founder Mother New York). Together Nick and Linus are reinvigorating McCann’s tremendous assets: its rich heritage, enviable roster of blue-chip clients, breadth of expert marketingdisciplines and global network of scale and reach. We too have been charged with reinventing McCann’s offering across Australia and New Zealand. And this restructuring is a necessary, if painful, step in helping us proactively transform our business, bringing innovation, creativity and performance to the forefront of all we do.
It is never a pleasant task to have to disrupt our team like this and it is not something we have done lightly. However, we now have a brilliant combined team of McCann and SMART talent across our Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland and Auckland offices, working across an equally brilliant portfolio of blue-chip clients. Indeed, in my career as a creative I would have killed to work in an agency with clients like Coca Cola, Holden, L’Oreal, Mastercard, Nestle, Specsavers, Uncle Tobys and Xbox all under the one roof.
With this change we have effectively removed a layer of middle to senior management that will help you all operate more efficiently and at our full strategic and creative potential. Importantly for our clients, this means more direct contact with the people who are actually working on their business, not just their business heads, and a leaner and faster operating structure. Indeed, while the merging of McCann and SMART has created the scale of a larger agency, we have the leadership, processes, structures and DNA of a creative independent, backed by global resources of the world’s largest agency network. This is a virtually unique proposition across Australia and New Zealand and a major competitive advantage as we take our reinvigorated offering to marketinto the new year.
We will not be replacing any of the middle to senior management roles that have been removed from the business. However over the coming weeks andmonths we will be adding more strategic, creative and digital talent to workdirectly with our clients. If you would like to recommend anyone you think should be part of the new McCann, now is the time to put them forward.
As always, if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions as a result of these changes, please do not hesitate to let me know.
Ben Lilley
Chief Executive Officer
Finally, a CEO who gets it. Good on you Ben and best of luck in your transformation efforts. The traditional model is not sustainable and those who persist with are merely in the ‘milking’ phase of their lives – extracting every bit of value from the model – before its ultimate and inevitable demise!
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Welcome in the modern creative triumvirate: an art director, a copywriter, and a creative technologist — images, words, and code. And not just in some disconnected pipeline. These will be the new collaborative unit, with the technologists at the table from the beginning, brainstorming original creative concepts.
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Can’t wait to see how McCann evolves. On paper, this sounds very promising. Best of luck, Ben.
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Bold move, much to be admired
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Sorry, but what’s happened here is that six weeks before Christmas these guys have sacked a bunch of hardworking people.
I guess that happens in business.
But then they have the gall and arrogance to publicly write them off as useless middle managers who have no future. Why is that necessary?
[edited by Mumbrella].
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With the number of people declaring so many things dead, I question whether marketers and advertisers will end this world before climate change does?
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Hear, hear Patrick and Cameron!
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Ben,
Does this mean you place no value at all in senior managers?
The industry’s pre-occupation with a youthful workforce being the only workforce of value is becoming sickening.
McCann’s has a great list of clients whose customers are far more diverse than the youth focus that has been Smart’s focus for so long and becomes a bit cliched, tiresome and limited for clients who are looking for diversity of input & experience from their agency.
With this renewed focuson relatively junior employees being the only ones of value, what is the proposed use by date of current employees. Should they feel nervous at 35….are they over the hill at 40.
Sounds like a blatent case of age discrimination wrapped up in the smoke and mirrors and puffery of having to present a new and improved agency. But that’s OK, the industry not only tolerates this but actively encourages and applauds it!
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I’m amazed that “direct contact for clients with the people actually working on their business” and “leaner and faster operating structure” are considered bold and transformational. No wonder the traditional shops are leaking clients and revenue like never before.
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It’s about time someone calls a spade a spade! Thanks. Less is more – I have recommended (and sold) that for years.
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Didn’t Chris Mort make a grand announcement 18 months ago about transformational change at McCanns ushering in a brand new, fully functioning digital system as a platform for the whole agency’s operations? With a creative digital guru new hire in charge? A new streamlined McCanns with powerful creative, leaner, faster, further. 18 months back?
Is Ben’s phase the sequel, just with less old guys around?
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If the tax office audits you, do you ask for the youngest tax accountant you can find to handle your case?
If you are in an emergency room with a senior doctor trying to save your life, do you defer to the young intern?
If you find your house has a major structural problem that needs fixing, do you brush aside an experienced builder in favour of his apprentice?
Each of these workplaces have a range of age and experience and each of them have value. McCann’s now believe that it is Smarter to offer clients less as apparently great campaigns are only created by apprentices…for apprentices!
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Amazed: Christmas is only a tool invented by senior advertising members to help sell people shit they don’t need, stick to the point.
To me it seems like if a few people stale members stayed around, a brilliant company would be in dire straights.
Good luck Ben
cant wait to see what happens next.
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Don’t let the creatives too close to the client – it will cost you business.
Seriously, we just want an effective ad/solution/whatever – not interested in creative as art, or hearing about the writer;’s latest short film etc.
You need people who can manage clients and being honest most creatives can’t with few notable exceptions.
Your client needs to have trust in their agency and I can tell you with all the 25 year old Account Directors (!) out there, it’s kind of hard, (especially when they are gorgeous as hell in a short skirt – nice for the client to perve on, but doesn’t give us confidence in the agency)
Also, too many agencies are run for the benefit of their creatives it seems to me, rather than to create the best solution for the client, as the creatives tend to always want to go for the ‘edgy’ idea that will get their peers to write nice stuff in the comments section of Campaign Brief, rather than a less ‘wow’ idea, but one that will work more effectively.
Keeping clients is hard, because a lot of agencies concentrate on new business and neglect existing clients or lie about the number of people working on the account, telling us there’s more, but actually having these poor exhausted people worked to the bone and selilng them at more than 100%.
And I hate that wank phrase used “disrupt our team” – your readers aren’t idiots, they know it means fired some people and that if you will slag off the people who left, that you won’t have much loyaltly to the existing staff either.
As a client its my relationship with my GAD and the creative work are equally important.
Lots of agencies can do great creative, but finding a good suit is bloody hard. If my GAD changes agencies, more than likely I would follow to his new agency.
And my GAD is either late 30’s or 40’s – which is older than me, but I trust their experience.
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And hopefully these cost-savings produced by streamlining and restructuring will be passed on to the clients. Nope? Didn’t think so.
I agree with many points made by “client” above. I want to be confident my account is well-managed, organised, the GAD / AM care about my business and that the work produced isn’t being rushed at the end. The creatives are the heartbeat of many agencies, but if we (as the client) have engaged you, we think your creative will be good already, now we want the dirty stuff to happen well – great project management etc..
Worth noting the “new model” structure. Creative Director dealing with clients? I’ve seen Mad Men, not all aspects of this model are new….
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