|
Saatchi & Saatchi. Hothouse for big, very big ideas
(Financial Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Saatchi & Saatchi Hothouse for big, very big ideas Saatchi can't go wrong with a new CEO, an environment where innovators thrive and a focused energy There is little doubt that the agency to watch out for in 2006 is Saatchi & Saatchi. A new CEO at the helm has given the agency a brand-new, energetic attitude and focus. The company has an inspirational dream: to be revered for world-changing ideas that create sustainable growth for its clients. Ideas are the currency of the future, says CEO Gail Curtis. If we're constantly coming up with ideas, we'll always have clients. To this end, the company has created an environment where the best ideas people thrive, thereby keeping our clients permanently infatuated with us. Curtis believes agencies that do this are the winners of the future.
What makes Saatchi & Saatchi unique is the ability to connect emotionally with consumers through the creation of Lovemarks, she says. Lovemarks are the essence of what Saatchi is about: we emotionally connect with our own people and clients and then with consumers. Talk of infatuation and love is frequent at Saatchi & Saatchi. For some reason, some brands simply run out of steam when the service or product that they deliver is as good, if not better, than some that seem to have a strong emotional connection with their consumer, says Ian Young, MD of Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town.
Lovemarks reach the hearts and minds of the consumer, thereby creating an intimate and emotional connection that they simply can't live without.
Lovemarks inspire loyalty beyond reason. Brands that have longevity connect with people emotionally. To enjoy Lovemark status requires the brand to have an element of mystery, sensuality and intimacy. He says there is a future beyond brands. We know how to turn a brand into a Lovemark. We have the necessary tools and expertise to ensure that consumers not only respect a brand, but truly love it and relate to it at a very fundamental level, says Young.
We are building Saatchi in SA as our very own Lovemark, says Curtis. We want people to love working here and to be inspired by the brand. According to Curtis, clients are looking for strategy; for big ideas that meet their business objectives. They want ideas that grow their brands and business; strategic and creative thinkers; partnerships with people who understand their business; recognition of their expertise; professionalism; enthusiasm; energy; innovation and ultimately communications that work, she says.
The focus for the year ahead is to build Saatchi & Saatchi as an ideas company. We want to be revered as the hothouse for world-changing creative ideas that build sustainable growth for our clients. We will reflect the spirit of Saatchi & Saatchi: One team, one dream. We're filling the agency with people from all areas of creativity; people that are first and foremost ideas-orientated because ultimately, creativity is ideas-driven. We want people who understand creativity as well as strategy and can contribute to making the environment both fun and challenging. The Imagination Labs were started to speed up transformation in the communications sector and expose young, talented people to the world of creativity. They offer those who graduate from them practical experience and hands-on knowledge through internships. It's our idea to extend these labs not just across SA but into Africa, using our Africa Network. Through these labs we will gain real insights that ultimately touch our clients' businesses and enable us to source grassroots creative talent, says Curtis.
We must also ensure that we have more black people in the industry generally, but particularly in the creative department. The company's below-the-line offering, Saatchi & Saatchi X, was recently launched, incorporating Saatchi & Saatchi Focus. Saatchi & Saatchi X, headed by Sheila McGillivray, taps into the concept of a global ideas company focused on turning shoppers into buyers by understanding what motivates shoppers to take action in store or at point of sale.
The interactive division, Saatchi & Saatchi AtPlay, headed by Uwe Gutschow, focuses on creating experiences for consumers, and strengthening brand relationships through its understanding of how the user interacts with the medium and his/her relationship with the brand.
Saatchi & Saatchi's Human Interest department is dedicated to training and skills development. Its tools include Ideas Exchange and Saatchi Switch. The Ideas Exchange is a biannual event. The purpose of the two-day workshop, which is attended by 40 Saatchi YIPS (Young Inspirational Players) from around the world, is to create commercial awareness, connections, inspiration and motivation.
Saatchi Switch, on the other hand, is a global initiative that allows people within the agency to switch with someone else in the global network for a period of four to six weeks to expose them to new ideas and cultures. The initiative was launched just over a year ago and already 32 switches have taken place within the network.
FAST FACTS Saatchi & Saatchi is one of the top 10 advertising agencies in SA by income.
Creatively it is one of the top five agencies.
Offices are located in Johannesburg and Cape Town, headed by Grant Meldrum and Ian Young respectively.
Gail Curtis was appointed CEO in 2005.
The Saatchi & Saatchi Africa Network is represented in 16 countries and is headquartered in SA.
Saatchi & Saatchi was one of the first agencies to recognise the need for black economic empowerment (BEE) in SA. Its total BEE ownership stands at 52%, with employment equity at 46%, making it one of the most broad-based empowerment companies in the industry.
Local management controls 24% of the shareholding.
1% of revenue/year is spent on training and development.
Major clients include Engen, PostBank, Procter & Gamble and Brandhouse, Peugeot, Diageo Africa, Novartis and Orange.
PASSIONATE ABOUT BRANDS Recently appointed Saatchi & Saatchi Johannesburg MD Grant Meldrum has had a diverse advertising career spanning three continents. The result of all his experience is that he is passionately interested in how people perceive brands. In our society, particularly the mass market, it's a huge risk to switch to other brands. Our challenge from an advertising perspective is to go below the radar and provide the unexpected in an interesting and relevant way which resonates with the consumer, he says. Saatchi is quintessentially an ideas company. Our job is to understand the consumer intimately and to turn brands into something that people can't live without a Lovemark. Lovemark is a great proprietary tool because it mixes the scientific with emotion, he says.
Meldrum's career began in London with FCB. He then moved across the Atlantic and joined a Texas-based, medium-sized ad agency. His next move was to establish a special events and promotions agency in Houston, Texas. Organising events opened up a whole new world to me, he says. It was my first taste of how important it is to provide consumers with experiences and how these experiences affect how brands are perceived. On his return to SA, Meldrum joined Ogilvy & Mather as an account director and later The Jupiter Drawing Room as group client service director. He then joined TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris as business unit director on MTN. He was headhunted back to the US by a telecommunications company specialising in unified messaging products and later a webcom portal start-up by the same company. He joined the Zimmerman Agency before returning to SA to head The Idea Atrium, the strategic planning arm of the Old Shanghai Firecracker Factory. Meldrum was appointed MD of Saatchi & Saatchi Johannesburg in November 2005. Advertising continues to change significantly, he says. Media fragmentation and people's increasingly diverse interests means that you have to use different media to reach them. At the same time the communication has to be interesting and relevant and most importantly, it has to resonate with the consumer. Our clients' consumers have become really cynical; we have to become smarter at how we seduce them again.
It is our responsibility, as joint brand custodians, to ensure that we are providing insights that generate groundbreaking ideas that ultimately produce measurable results for our clients. We have to be accountable to our clients by producing ideas that transcend advertising, that affect all of the brand experiences that our consumers encounter. Meldrum believes that people want to fall in love (with brands): We just need to help, by playing Cupid! Meldrum is positive about Saatchi's future: We have a fantastic roster of clients, who look to us to help unravel and uncover the real needs and desires of their customers. Having access to the kind of brainpower in the worldwide Saatchi network gives us a real advantage we call it Headhunting.
The ideas-driven philosophy bodes well for us in terms of increasing market share for our clients. AFRICA NETWORK: QUALITY ACROSS THE CONTINENT Saatchi & Saatchi's Africa Network consists of 13 agencies situated in sub-Saharan Africa, with key hubs situated in Nigeria (servicing West Africa), Kenya (servicing East Africa) and SA (servicing Southern Africa). The remaining agencies are situated in Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, C'te d'Ivoire, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius and the DRC.
Our philosophy is that we want a few great agencies in Africa rather than more, less productive agencies, says Eric Frank, Saatchi & Saatchi Africa Network ECD.
A network is only as strong as its weakest link and our ultimate aim is that our Africa Network is able to provide the level of service in Africa that you would expect in the developed world. To this end, a skills development programme has been instituted across Africa with the intention that the Africa Network will start mirroring the global Saatchi & Saatchi network.
Frank admits that the advertising industry in the rest of Africa can be challenging, particularly as the concept of a traditional ad agency is a bit of an anomaly. Few ad agencies are involved only in advertising. In addition, there are numerous media challenges in terms of accurate scheduling.
However, we've been really successful in implementing our Lovemarks tool. It has helped us come to grips with our consumers' emotional needs and led to particularly penetrating insights. This has gone a long way towards building creative integrity and developing ideas way beyond advertising. He is quick to point out that doing business in Africa is hugely exciting. You're faced with new challenges every day and you can easily move the goalposts because you're not tied down by a great deal of bureaucracy and legislation. In addition, there are excellent opportunities in Africa and because ideas play such a significant role in people's lives, you can really shape the future and influence lives. Brands have significant status in people's lives throughout Africa and big brands easily take on iconic status. In many instances, brands have become role models for people's lives, especially since Africans have been let down by their leaders so often, he says. GETTING TO THE HEART OF RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING Saatchi & Saatchi subsidiary Ayanda Mbanga Communications is a recruitment company with a difference. Rather than acting as a headhunting service, the company specialises in advertising jobs and attracting the right candidates to available positions. Furthermore, it doesn't derive its income from its clients but rather from media commissions and candidates who don't apply to Ayanda Mbanga Communications but to the actual company concerned.
We specialise in writing, designing and placing the recruitment ad in the appropriate media, says MD and founder Ayanda Mbanga. She established the company in 1998 with just four employees. Today the company employs 30 people in offices situated in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, with media billings of R65m for 2005.
We're in a highly competitive business, says Mbanga. Which company clients choose to use boils down to a relationship issue: who they like and relate to. What gives us a competitive edge is that we focus on understanding our clients, how their businesses operate and the work environment. Our copywriters all have a good knowledge of HR practices and how to appropriately word job requirements. Clients include parastatals, government and consumer goods companies, among others.
THE GUINNESS LOVEMARK Seven years ago the African market for Guinness was a huge opportunity waiting for the right spark to ignite it. The response by Saatchi & Saatchi, the agency responsible for Guinness in Africa, was to give consumers of Guinness an emotional connection and attachment to the brand that went beyond any previous advertising process. In short, to begin to turn the Guinness brand in Africa into a Lovemark. The agency's challenge was to double Guinness sales by 2005 and to find the Simple, Universal, Relevant Truth that would persuade the African continent to love and adore Guinness, and create a loyalty and passion for the brand and what it stands for. A loyalty beyond reason, says Frank. The brief was challenging as it required a big idea which would work across all cultures and languages in Africa.
This was the perfect opportunity to apply our Lovemark tool to this fantastic brand, a brand with huge respect. All we needed to do was to uncover deep consumer insights, insights that would help Guinness develop a deeper emotional connection with our consumer base, says Ian Young, MD of Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town. The result was the creation of a fictional character, Michael Power, Africa's own Bond but without any particulars regarding age or nationality, thus not relegating the character to any particular ethnic group or a specific African region.
Michael Power became the action hero of a series of three- to five-minute mini-adventures on both radio and television. Though he was initially found only in action scenarios where his virility and resourcefulness enabled him to master any situation, in the past few years he has been featured in many more locally relevant domestic scenarios.
Michael Power personifies the Guinness values: powerful, heroic and self-assured, and his appearances were soon grabbing media headlines throughout Africa.
The mini-films were popular with African television stations, which aired them as free programming. By 2000, Guinness led the African beer market by 50%. Brand recognition reached a remarkable 95% and volume growth increased to 50% in some markets. Guinness sales in Africa doubled two years ahead of schedule in 2003.
In 2003, Guinness took the campaign to new heights with the film Critical Assignment, starring the same actor who had acted as Michael Power since the launch of the campaign. The film stars the character on a mission to stop a corrupt African politician from buying weapons with money stolen from government water projects. Critical Assignment was the largest Pan-African marketing initiative ever undertaken by Guinness Africa and through this campaign Guinness in Africa made the transition from a brand to a Lovemark, says Frank.
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
|
INDUSTRIES
INDUSTRIES
Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO East, February 2-4, 2009. Miami, Florida.
