‘We’re the only one-stop-shop at scale in Australia’: EssenceMediacom APAC CEO fires warning shot
EssenceMediacom has made plenty of noise in its one-month lifespan.
A new agency boss, a freshened-up senior leadership team with even splits across incoming and existing staff members and a new proposition has the new combined GroupM agency puffing its chest out.
Price and McPetrie joined this week’s Mumbrellacast
“We truly are the only one stop-shop in Australia”, Rupert McPetrie, APAC CEO told the Mumbrellacast this week alongside national chief strategy officer, Sophie Price.
Despite being bullish on the new super-agency’s chances, McPetrie said GroupM is strongest when all three agencies are firing.
McPetrie said what EssenceMediacom is trying to achieve as ‘the breakthrough agency’, is “create something new and different”, as opposed to the rest of the GroupM stable which includes Mindshare and Wavemaker.
“I’ll be very transparent, based on some of the feedback I’m getting around town, and around the market from our competitors, there’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing.”
“I think we’re the only agency at scale that now has this sort of one-stop-stop capability and capacity here in Australia, in the wider region and beyond.”
After much anticipation, EssenceMediacom officially launched a month ago, taking its mantle as the largest agency at GroupM, and one of the single largest media agencies in market.
“Every agency has their positioning and their narrative. Right now, we’re just focused on ours.”
Price said breakthrough thinking means innovation today that becomes the BAU of tomorrow.
“It’s important that ‘breakthrough’ isn’t just a one-off marketing stunt [or] a sexy bit of outdoor. We all love those, but fundamentally breakthrough is bigger than that. It’s about how we’re changing the marketing model on behalf of our clients moving forward.”
How will EssenceMediacom shape up not only against its competitors now, but also against its internal stablemates?
McPetrie said GroupM is a leader across the globe, and is aided by having multiple strong agencies.
GroupM: strongest when everyone is firing
“How we leverage, if you like, the platform operations that the group’s developing will be pretty consistent, buut how we go to market, what we sort of build on top of that in our agency ecosystem as EssenceMediacom, that for me is the differentiator.”
“Obviously, our friends in the other agencies in the group have their own take on that, but the simple truth is, GroupM is strong when all three agencies are strong and vice versa, right? So we allwant to contribute to that greater good.”
EssenceMediacom is set to be led locally by newly appointed CEO Pippa Berlocher. She replaces Pat Crowley, who will stay with the agency, moving into the client-facing role of managing partner.
Crowley has spent much of the last year working towards the merger, after being selected to head up the new mega-agency locally in April. Previously, he had been CEO of Essence since late 2021.
Catch the full interview with Price and McPetrie on the Mumbrellacast below
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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I used to say that the SwitchedOn/SwitchedOn Media/AKQA/AKQA Media/Essence team felt like an extension of our team, but it doesn’t feel like that at all anymore.
So perhaps “there’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing.” but is that for the right reasons? I think not!
We had a great team before the merger – our SEO and Owned Media contacts have both recently left – we had a powerhouse team of 4 and now have a team of 10 – yet somehow requests that used to take 2 days are now taking 2-4 weeks. I’m with Jane – not happy. It’s definitely now as great as it used to be – it’s a real shame.
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Hi @nothappyJan
I’m the new MD at EM in Sydney. If you would like to discuss the above or anything else directly, please drop me a line at stevie.douglas-neal@essencemediacom.com. I’d love to take the feedback and help resolve any issues.
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A lot of sizzle but didn’t see anything about the sausage.
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What do they mean by ‘One Stop Shop’?
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Hmmmmm then why can’t you attract or retain staff or clients?
The acquisition of AKQA for example hasn’t exactly been a great success.
I think it’s fair to say EssenceMediacom isn’t currently it’s once powerful self.
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This comment doesn’t make any sense.
AKQA is unrelated to EssenceMediacom apart from both being part of WPP.
AKQA Media was a differnet entitity.
And a new agency can hardly be referred to its former self.
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