A clash of civilisations: The challenge of integrating The Monkeys into Accenture
Accenture's move on creative agency The Monkeys, and the inevitable culture clash between the two organisations, represents one of the major challenges facing businesses globally – how to successfully integrate science with art, the analytical with the creative. In this guest post, Jason Rose looks at how the two companies can come together without destroying the very thing Accenture was seeking: creativity.
The recent acquisition of The Monkeys by Accenture has generated a lot of discussion within the advertising industry with several commentators convinced the two companies’ cultures are fundamentally incompatible.
Jason Rose
Given that consultancies like Accenture are the very people major corporates call in to help them integrate newly acquired businesses, they certainly should have the experience necessary to successfully integrate a 120-person creative shop.
The acquisition does, however, pose a unique integration test for Accenture because the more successfully it integrates The Monkeys, the greater the risk that it will destroy the very thing that it was seeking to acquire: creativity.
Having worked in both creative agencies and professional services firms, it is certainly true that their cultures are very different. I’m not sure whether the senior management of Accenture will see the productivity value of two creatives shooting the breeze around a foosball table.
Yet the challenge of integrating The Monkeys into Accenture is a far larger story than this one transaction. It is, in fact, one of the major challenges facing businesses globally – how to successfully integrate science with art, the analytical with the creative.
Consultancies like Accenture in recent years have discovered that the explosion in data has allowed them to move to the centre of companies’ marketing functions by playing to their traditional strengths – the application of structured and analytical rigour.
What these firms are now also realising is that the analytical is only one half of the conversation. The number crunching puts companies in the right place at the right time to talk to the right customers. Once they’re there, however, they still need to be able to surprise and delight to win the sale. That’s creativity.
Bringing these two worlds and mindsets together is difficult but the most successful businesses have always recognised the value of being able to do so effectively.
Take Apple as an example. There are fascinating accounts of the clash of cultures between the company’s designers and engineers as they battled to finish the first prototype of the iPhone. Doors were slammed and meetings stormed out of amid much yelling and abuse.
Nevertheless, the iPhone prototype – an amazing blend of design and engineering – was not only completed, but the product has since gone on to sell over one billion units.
I would argue that a key value driver of Apple is its ability to successfully integrate the often-conflicting cultures of art and science. It would also seem that doing so effectively involves a willingness to embrace conflict rather than trying to avoid it.
Therefore, commentators talking about the inevitable clash of cultures between Accenture and The Monkeys are only focusing on half of the story. For this deal to succeed, the two parties need to embrace their clash of cultures, not hide from it. They need to celebrate their differences and butt heads in the pursuit of greatness.
This will take leadership and courage and the perfect balance of ego and humility. There will inevitably be moments when both parties will question whether they made the right decision in pursuing the transaction. These are the moments of truth that separate glory from failure.
Will they succeed? Time will tell. But one thing is clear: if they do, it will not only boost the breadth of Accenture’s product offering to clients. It will also serve as a powerful case study that they have mastered a key value creation challenge facing global business today: successfully marrying marketing science and art.
Jason Rose is co-founder of marketing services investment company Ambient Ventures
Whatever happens their is more competition in the market and so agencies need to get used to it. Competition is good for business. Management Consultancies getting into marketing could go either way…just look at how wellFairfax has done since Todd Sampson was placed on their board as Chief Creative Officer (downgrade after downgrade) – did not help Fairfax one bit ( the decline started many years earlier before Todd arrived)…perhaps they have been missing some good strategy consultancy advice? So will be interesting to see how it works with PwC’s appointment of Russell Howcroft and the same goes for Accenture and The Monkeys. In terms of creativity most management consultants are a mirrored reflection of there clients, which does not necessarily deliver dynamic innovative forward thinking outcomes for said clients or their products. Perhaps agencies need to start moving in on the traditional management consultancy bread and butter business? Some marketing agencies are already doing that and moving into business transformation offerings and delivering exceptional results for global brands…I think agencies in Australia need to get out of their constricted thinking and welcome competition by flipping their own models and start competing in traditional Management Consultancy arenas! Compete by changing the management consultancy model and offer renumeration based on performance instead of hourly billings…just a few simple thoughts!
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I’m not a sceptic of this buyout, and in fact quite the opposite. CB ran an interview the other day with Drape and I quote;
‘What kind of business transformation capabilities can the agency now present to clients?
We can now go a lot deeper when it comes to understanding business objectives beyond marketing. We’re still going to be focussed on providing strategic thinking and creative solutions but, whenever the opportunity presents itself, the strategy and ideas will be more seamlessly connected to the insights gleaned from the business platforms and customers needs that Accenture Interactive have established.’
(http://www.campaignbrief.com/2.....drape.html)
I would suggest that both Accenture and Monkeys know exactly what they’re doing. At first blush it might appear that Accenture have bought into a ‘high-maintenance’ culture, but I think both parties are looking beyond the marcomms space with this transaction.
Accenture (and PWC) have bought into channel-specific creative enterprises before. What started as accessing the chunky margins to be found in actually producing annual reports (as opposed to just providing the figures) has burgeoned into buying other creative enterprises such as web companies – the result of becoming familiar with broader design capabilities that came with the purchase of companies that specialised in annual reports. Another corollary of this now prolonged exposure being the ability to sort the ‘creative flake’ from the ‘creative non-flake’.
Monkeys demonstrate another facet to this. For too long, the CD title became a glass ceiling for the creative. The recent addition of ECD, CCO and Creative Chairman positions have mitigated this somewhat, however for the most part these positions demand administrative and glad-handling responsibilities, as opposed to a greater creative challenge. For Drape et al., I believe they still crave the creative challenge and are now looking outside the marketing silo to address that need.
(I note here that Jim Ingram’s linkedin account features the title ‘Founder of X / Executive Creative Director / Commercial Problem Solver’. If ‘X’ is the new Ingram/Couzens/Ferrier’ entity, then ‘commercial problem solver’ might indicate another example of creatives looking for this new challenge.)
Where the Accenture/Monkeys model might have strong chance of succeeding lies in two areas;
1 – The Accenture Consulting principals will act as an effective filter to the C-suite. The creative type is notorious for generating a bunch of crazy stupid in the search for crazy brilliant, and this process should not be exposed to a C-suite unused to dealing with this apparent randomness. It will be incumbent upon both parties to work together towards a proposed solution and present it credibly. Which leads to the next point;
2 – Accenture has access to vast tranches of data and strong analytic capabilities, allowing both parties to derive and substantiate their case in a manner with which the C-suite will be accustomed.
I wish the best to Monkeys on this. Good read Jason.
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Good science is art
The best scientists are artists
Which makes Accenture what I wonder?
I agree with the strategy of advertising agencies trying to muscle in on consultacies’ turf. To be successful, however, agencies must learn two key lessons from consultants:
1. An absolute commitment to achieving a client’s commercial goals (the old results vs. awards debate ); and
2. The ability to demonstrate those results with the rigour that senior management and boards expect and understand.
Jason.
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Cheers, Antony. I think you make a really good point. For a long time the advertising industry was the victim of it’s own arrogance. It kind of thought it had all the answers. As a former creative, I’ve been part of that personally. I think that nowadays it takes a mosaic of skillsets to achieve true greatness. Probably the most important capability today is collaboration, which demands supreme confidence and humility in equal measure.
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They need to co- develop a way of working. Not bolt on an ad agency to there services.
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Thanks for responding Jason. I’m still a creative, but currently pursuing studies in psychology to broaden the skillset. One result of these studies is an interest in coming to solutions outside the marcomms silo as well.
I’m not sure success is guaranteed with the Monkeys/Accenture model, but it seems that they are forging a new path.
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Accenture Interactive or “AI” as they’re referred to (Accenture’s agency who acquired The Monkeys) already has a similiar “culture” to that of The Monkeys.
If you’re concerned about “shooting the breeze over foosball” – you should go and see their office (and bar) complete with foosball, pool tables, a trendy barista and booze… pretty agency esque to me….
However, these are just details – the bigger more important factor at play is merging creative, digital and traditional consultancy.
I feel confident The Monkeys management team’s new found position within the leadership team at AI will ensure respectful and cohesive integration of “creative” into the AI offering – and vice versa.
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This is, IMHO, a brilliant (long) read on this subject:
https://blog.marvelapp.com/state-of-the-digital-nation-2016/
The culture clash is examined closely and intelligently. I’ve stolen many ideas from this piece.
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Agency acquisition is nothing new for Accenture in Australia. Digital agencies such as Reactive, and design firms like Fjord have been acquired in the last 5 years, and that is just in Australia (there is a huge global acquisition push). As an Accenture employee I still see the struggle to integrate, both from an external brand view and an internal culture shift. To me, the us vs them mentality doesn’t work it only builds walls. I see movements towards integration, but even our physical space reminds us of our difference (half the office was redesigned to be cool and “agencyesque” complete with cafe, while the rest of us sit in corporate land)
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Hi Kim.
Many years ago I worked at KPMG. I remember that within the firm there were cliques between staff who joined through the acquisition of other firms and those who directly joined the parent firm.
If these divisions were evident among a homogenous pool of accountants, it must be so much more pronounced when trying to fuse together people from very different backgrounds and cultures.
I think the key is to celebrate difference rather than trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist.
Jason.
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I think the integration argument is completely over blown and if anything simply serves to play up the agencies naivety and arrogance. It shouldn’t be forgotten that The Monkeys choose to do the deal with Accenture, at the behest of all the usual agency holding company suitors. The same goes for Heat in the USA choosing Deloitte, Karmarama in the UK choosing Accenture, Fjord choosing Accenture – the list goes on. Recently Heat won the LG account, in part based off the existing work Deloitte has been doing with LG. The synergies are both obvious and formidable.
The management consultancies are experts at identifying and solving business performance issues. Today, marketing (from creative through to media) is a business performance issue.
The agencies are the other hand – are simply not versed or proficient are solving business performance issues. One only needs to look at the broken digital advertising model for starters….
Interesting and exciting times indeed we live in. Expect media to be blown apart next…..
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People are creative. Ideas come from everywhere. Fuse that with scale, deep tech and value based engagements in the new world and well, look out.
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