‘We’re not caught in the hamster wheel of pitching’ – how Spark44 turned the agency model upside down
You don’t often hear an agency reference Men At Work when discussing its plans, much less wish to distance itself from that most quintessential of Australian bands.
Yet Eric Markgraf, chief operating officer at Spark44, insisted, cryptically at first, how the agency did not want to follow the same path as lead vocalist Colin Hay and his fellow Men At Work members.
Not that the 80s rockers didn’t have success, of course. Is there an Australian who can’t bang out the words to Down Under?
However, Markgraf, with tongue firmly in cheek, was having none of it.
“As our chief executive says, we’ve done well with our first album but, as Men At Work will testify, it’s very hard to get a second album,” he said. “But we don’t want to be like Men At Work and have only one album. We want to have two great albums, and more. So we’re working towards that and are excited about the future.”
The first “album” referred to by Markgraf has been several years in the making, and it began in a joint venture with Jaguar Land Rover back in 2011. Its aim, through the creation of Spark44, was to break the mould of the traditional agency model.
On Spark44’s website, you won’t find a selection of brand logos of current and former clients. There is no section dedicated to testimonials from various chief marketers.
Furthermore, you won’t come across a team of anxious senior executives huddled over a pitch document. There is no wasted creative energy on a piece of business the agency may never win.
What you will find is a network of global offices dedicated to producing work and finding solutions for one client, and one client only – Jaguar Land Rover. It’s a singular focus that sets it apart from the daily scrum of pitching.
“We’re just not caught up in this hamster wheel of pitching,” Markgraf explained during a presentation at Mumbrella360. “We’re not pitching every single week, or even every month for other business. We feel we’re not burning people out.”
The view, not unexpectedly, is shared by JLR Australia marketing director Kevin Nicholls.
“We get 100% focus from all of the staff on Jaguar and Land Rover,” he said. “Spark44 don’t spend time looking for new clients and new business. And they’re not saying stuff to us because they need to keep the account. It’s a relationship and structure that works.”
The origins of Spark44 can be found in failure. A failure to see what both parties described as an “advanced agency model”.
“We could not find it anywhere in the industry, so we created it,” are the words jointly attributed to the chief executives of JLR and Spark44, Ralf Speth and Ralf Specht.
To the casual observer, the 50/50 ownership – with JLR the sole client – may suggest that Spark44 is little more than an in-house agency, creating work under the instruction and direction of the client. That would be to misunderstand the nature of the relationship and company structure that goes way beyond joint ownership, Nicholls said.
“Locally we operate very much like a traditional client-agency set-up in that Spark has a separate office to us. It’s a separate business unit if you like.
“We have complete transparency of the books, what we’re paying and what we’re getting in return. And we have a clear schedule of work. But what Spark is not is a department of marketing. It’s not an in-house agency. It’s external. They have their own culture.”
Critically – and this is what many agencies are unable to do, or too timid to do for fear of irritating and, at worst, losing the client – JLR is told “no”.
“We get pushback, we get independent thinking, and that is so important,” Nicholls stressed. “What I don’t want is an agency that does what we say all the time. We have honest conversations. Occasionally we’re going to say ‘I want to do this.’ But you want a relationship. Otherwise, quite frankly, you might as well have a department. You might as well do it yourself.”
Jasmin Bedir, Spark44 Sydney’s managing director, also concurs: “When I opened this office in Sydney three years ago, I wanted to have that partnership with a client. We sit in different offices and have different cultures, but because we both have a vested interest in the success of Land Rover and Jaguar, whatever Spark44 recommends for a client, it’s not because it suits our bottom line or because we want to win an award. Our goals are aligned. And that’s true partnership.”
Since its launch, Spark44’s workforce has swollen to approximately 1000, scattered across 19 offices in 17 countries. Twenty-five of these currently sit in Spark44’s North Sydney base. However, while its headquarters are in the UK, Markgraf said the agency consciously steers clear from any hierarchical structure, or “top-down global push” as he puts it.
A global campaign, he explained, can come from anywhere.
“What is different and innovative is the global nature of what we’re doing. If you truly understand Jaguar’s DNA, and know what they stand for and are true to the brand, then why can’t a brand campaign, a global campaign, come from our Shanghai office, our LA office, from London, Madrid or from here in Sydney? The great thing about that is that we get different views and different creative ideas from around the world. And any of them can be exploited globally with changes to a little of the local nuances.”
Markgraf stressed that working with the same client, and working towards the same P&L, creates a harmonious relationship between offices where “the only competition is among ourselves in terms of creating the best work”.
“It’s gratifying to see all the offices working together. That’s why it’s an exciting new model.”
Even with Australia sitting nine-to-11 hours behind the UK, and a sizable six hours behind its central Middle-Eastern hub in Dubai, global collaboration still underpins the everyday activities of Bedir’s Sydney team.
“Everyone has the tools for collaboration. There’s lots of FaceTiming and group interaction. We work in tribes; people are on projects and work in different offices, and they all become friends. I’ve never seen this in other agencies on this scale,” she explains. “With Australia, we have to make an effort to be involved given our time zone, but I don’t care where you do this from – you can work from home – or when, as long as the work gets done.”
Not that Spark44’s local offices have a completely blank canvass. Being a British brand, the tone is set from the UK, according to Nicholls.
“And that’s the right way for it to be. That tone is then interpreted locally.”
But can producing work for the same client satisfy the artistic urges of the creative team, and broader workforce? Do they not crave product diversity?
Markgraf responded by emphasising that while working for one client, there are two distinct brands in Jaguar and Land Rover.
“Furthermore, if you look at other agencies, creatives usually only get a chance to work on one or two accounts even if the agency has a ton of clients,” he explained. “Another thing that keeps everybody interested is our broad spectrum of work. We do all the CRM, all the social, all the digital. We do everything except PR and media, so there’s a lot of stuff to keep people happy.”
It would seem the addition of those absent disciplines – media and PR – is only a matter of time to create a full-service agency. But while PR is beginning to be integrated into the business, handling JLR’s media planning and buying won’t happen any time soon.
The reasons are refreshingly honest.
“It’s a good question, but we don’t want to bite off more than we can chew. We weren’t built for media and want to dedicate our efforts on strategy, account work and creative,” he said. “We didn’t have the expertise, to be honest with you and we don’t have other clients to create the power to obtain discounts as global media partners do right now. So we’ll leave media to the media agencies.”
In another nod to the collaboration between offices, Spark44’s operations chief revealed the agency has its own version of Airbnb called – and this must have taken some time to conjure up – Sparkbnb, an initiative designed to not only provide learnings between geographies but to give staff the experience, both personally and professionally, of working overseas.
“We emphasise the benefits of moving around, and we allow people to go to any market they want and to switch,” Markgraf said. “And this is not just a theory; this happens all the time. We want a global perspective because the world is global and we think it benefits the client when we get different perspectives from around the world.”
So what’s next for Spark44? In terms of its JLR joint venture, technology, as ever, will be front and centre. The agency has created an incubator division where “a group of young people from around the world” are creating apps and technology solutions for Jaguar and Land Rover.
Beyond that of course, the agency is looking for similar JV ventures with other clients. That second album.
The model has worked impressively with JLR, so why not use it as a blueprint to expand?
“We want to bring other clients into this JV model because it’s been so successful,” Markgraf said. “So we’re excited about the future and where we take this model.”
According to Bedir, Spark44 Sydney is now ready and open to attempting to replicate the model with another client – however, she admits it’s not as simple as going into creative pitches. Building a new agency around a brand is a big undertaking for any brand marketer.
She says: “We believe the model is now mature enough so we know what works and how we can set it up for another client. It could be another JV, but there are different grades of partnerships. It’s a longer conversation, but a JV is the ideal. What it brings is transparency, and that is the key.”
Um
It’s easy when your half owned by your client!
You don’t have to pitch
Easy!
But means your work might not be as good
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