Mediacom gets serious
Six months ago today, Mediacom lost major client David Jones.
It prompted me to write an opinion piece asking why WPP agencies are not the force in Australia they are in other parts of the world.
My main focus was on Mediacom, which I always found to be fearsomely competitive in other regions.
Six months later, it strikes me that locally they’re now in a much better place.
With Anne Parsons now gone, CEO Toby Jenner is freer to call the shots.
There’ve been a string of appointments – Mat Baxter, older and wiser than his final months at Naked, has been chief strategy officer for nearly a year.
There’ve also been senior hires in the branded content area.
And as we report today, Nic Hodges has joined from Clemenger BBDO in chief geek type role.
That’s interesting for a number of reasons.
First, it’s still unusual – too unusual – for clever people to make the move from ad agency to media agency.
Second, for all their claims about being all over social media, I would struggle to count more than three or four people in senior roles at mainstream ad agencies who genuinely interact with social media themselves.
Certainly Nic Hodges is one of very few mainstream agency people I’ve spotted at Social Media Club Sydney events. He’s also one of the few whose Twitter profile consists of more than half a dozen half hearted tweets and a handful of followers. He also blogs too.
Which is a bit of a loss for Clemenger. With the coming departure of ECD Richard Maddocks, Clems Syndey is clearly facing some issues.
It’s also interesting in that this is the second recent example of a media agency boosting its understanding of social media – last week PHD revealed its involvement in the Australian launch of We Are Social.
So Mediacom feels to me like an agency where the building blocks are dropping into place.
It’s a big investment and one that at the very least gives them a shot at building a winning culture.
Certainly if I was a client, they’re interesting enough that I’d put them on my pitch list to see what they can come up with.
But they are working against a deadline of sorts.
I’m sure former boss Annie Parsons will return from Europe when her non-compete expires. She had very strong relationships with several Mediacom clients. Wherever she ends up (Mitchells?), Mediacom will have to be ready for the possibility of clients moving across. So they’ve now got just a few months to deliver those existing clients with such a good service that they won’t want to move.
It also comes in the context of other big moves across WPP’s group M agencies, with the return of John Steedman to head Group M in Australia. And James Greet taking the reins at Mindshare in a month’s time.
WPP being WPP, the investment in talent will be followed by expectation of a return. Which means expectation of new business across its agencies.
But what is obvious, is that WPP is finally taking Australia seriously.
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Media agencies; Creative agencies. Social media, mainstream media…. The line blurs more every day. Looks like the media shops, the original champions of unbundling and its benefits will in quick order be keen to offer content creation (btw can someone tell me how content creation is different to ‘creative services’ because apparently people like Mediacom are on public record as not wanting to deliver creative services). Already buying shops are shouting from the rooftops the benefits of doing it all under the one roof. And whilst that’s fair enough commercially I would contend the culture and approach used by creative agencies and media agencies is very different. And has a direct impact on the work developed. Which approach is better , well that would depend on who you work for and the barrow you’re pushing.
Anyhow it will be interesting to watch the evolving nature of these businesses.
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Great hire, am sure he’ll do well.
Unrelated to Nic Hodges or Mediacom,
@Mumbrella I want to pick you up on the following…
I take your point about senior people who ‘genuinely interact with social media’ and I also recall you singled out Tony Thomas last year for not keeping up a sufficient tweet-count by your reckoning, back when you offered up your opinion on why The Population closed. Seeing you flag your involvement point again in the above opinion piece, I can’t help wondering what you mean by ‘genuinely interacting with social media’?
Just as you don’t have to be a regular contributing author to Mumbrella to genuinely understand and evaluate the content on Mumbrella – or participate meaningfully in the comments thread – nor do you have to have a social-media presence visible to all in advertising in order to genuinely understand how people use social media. I understand foursquare, I like the concept, but I won’t ever use it myself. So what?
Also, I would venture many senior people in Australian agencies have a very firm grasp indeed of Facebook. And considering that, by some measures, social media as experienced by most people in Australia – outside Social Media Club – is arguably little more than facebook and a few blogs, then maybe most senior people know enough to get by well enough and can tap-in to specialists when required to top-up cutting-edge / early adopter knowledge as it develops?
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Hi Victor,
The key point is the word “genuinely”. One issue I have is with those who would have clients believe they’re all over this thing, then when you take a look, all the team started Twitter profiles a fortnight before because they’d decided to add social media to their offering. I can think of at least one agency that did exactly that.
You other statement: “I understand foursquare, I like the concept, but I won’t ever use it myself. So what?”: I’m not sure whether Foursquare is going to be massive in marketing or not. But I do know that hearing people talk about it and reading about it was one thing, but I didn’t begin to understand it’s potential until I’d used it. But perhaps you’re cleverer than me.
And yes, let’s hope for the sake of traditional agencies that social media remains a fringe element that they can call in specialists for once in a while. If they’re wrong it could be an expensive mistake.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Victor,
If you were here 60 years ago, you’d have been saying:
“I understand television, I like the concept, but I won’t ever use it myself. So what?”
And perhaps:
“And considering that, by some measures, broadcasting as experienced by most people in Australia is arguably little more than radio and a few newspapers, then maybe most senior people know enough to get by well enough and can tap-in to specialists when required to top-up cutting-edge / early adopter knowledge of television as it develops?”
Agencies’ jobs are to lead, not to follow.
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@mumbrella. Those lot with six tweets are a letdown I agree. But you’ve misunderstood my final point. Social media is not a fringe element, it’s just part of life. I’m suggesting – with facebook as an example – that maybe social media is already such a big part of most people’s day to day lives that you don’t have to be chasing the latest thing and shouting loudly about it to have some level of understanding… Not as consumer trends stand anyway.
I read this blog post a little while back and it made me think that, for now atleast, maybe social media strategies aren’t as complicated as many with a vested interest make out (I’m guessing that probably includes you @anonymous)!:
http://quintessentiallydigital.....-just.html
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… that Paul Nagy from Clemenger BBDO Wellington (that’s in New Zealand) would be a perfect replacement for Richard Maddocks.
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