Today’s must-have accessory – transformation officers
Dominic Mills hacks his way through some unfathomable language to understand why every media agency needs its own agent for transformation. Plus: A tale of two retailers…and TV
Blimey, Jason Dormieux’s appointment last week as chief transformation officer of Wavemaker – an agency obviously in the midst of a period of transition – is but the tip of an iceberg.
These days it seems, everybody but everybody needs to have their own pet transformation officer, a must-have accessory for the modern agency – at least if you’re in WPP, which has embraced the idea across the globe.
Obviously there’s Lindsay Pattison, the queen of WPP transformationers, who started at GroupM a year ago and then added the entire WPP empire to her brief last November. But they are springing up all over the place. JWT has its own one – Stefano Zunino, as does WPP in Australia and New Zealand.
And then there’s Sue Unerman, who I think can fairly claim to have set the ball rolling as the first person to take on this role; she became Mediacom’s chief transformation officer in January 2017, several months before the bandwagon was started.
In fact, WPP is not the only holding company to have jumped on this. While I can see no trace of the job title in Omnicom – and please tell me if I’m wrong – Publicis has at least three; one is Publicis Conseil’s Luc Wise – perfect name for the role, by the way; and Claire Molyneaux at Publicis Communications Europe and Jeremy Bowles in North America.
So what do they do all day, you ask? It seems to vary widely, but split roughly between those who look outwards – like Unerman, who is mostly focused on helping clients get to grips with digital’s impact on their businesses (a bit like a management consultancy, then), and to a lesser extent on media communications product – and those who are focused wholly internally.
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Pattison, for example, is all about getting WPP’s 50 global client teams (just 49 if the Ford business drifts away) to work better – in management speak this is probably called ‘horizontality maximisation’; Dormieux, again in WPP management speak, is all about “creating and commercialising future-ready products…that help our clients’ businesses grow.”
Some times they bridge the gap, although the language they use is still difficult to unpick. Luc Wise, for example, is helping reposition Publicis Conseil as a “full brand experience agency” (whatever that is) as well as helping clients transform. Meanwhile, in her own words – translation please – Molyneux promises to “ignite the alchemy of creativity and technology between the creative, influence and production agencies of Publicis”.
Hacking my way through the sometimes unfathomable language, I get it. No-one doubts that agencies have to change and, more important than that, be seen to do it by both clients and staff. Hence the very real need to go public with such roles.
This need to change is in every area, not just diversity, recruitment and behaviour, but also work and structure.
All this is positive. But looking at the job titles and apparent responsibilities, you wonder how it works in real life without leading to hellish turf wars.
Take, randomly, JWT. It has its own CTO. But how does his writ translate say, in Australia versus that of the WPP ANZ CTO? And then, what if it involves JWT Australia in some WPP global team, where Lindsay Pattison is CTO? And then, just to make it more complicated, how does a JWT change in the UK sit with WPP’s UK country manager.
It’s a proper old muddle, which I suspect was just about sustainable when Sir Martin ruled WPP with his iron grip and forensic attention to detail. But now?
But while we all agree agencies have to change what they do and how they do it, perhaps more than anything, it is the business model that needs to transform, or at least adapt.
But who’s taking charge of that transformation? It ought to be the CTO, but it doesn’t seem to be.
A tale of two retailers…and TV
No – not those two, more of which later as things pan out.
Instead, I’m obliged to City analysts at Liberum who last week revealed the full extent of their passion for all things TV – well, all things insofar as they relate to investor returns.
First, Liberum announces that ITV is actually hugely underpriced (by about 80pc) at current levels of 150p.
Why? Well, one would assume this is probably linked to the takeover battle for Sky, suggesting there are non-UK broadcasters who would be happy to get some telly action over here, and if Sky is out of the picture they might target ITV instead.
A second explanation is that Liberum has been chatting to some big media buyers, and reckons they are about to go large on World Cup advertising, hence a better overall picture for TV advertising after a weakish Q1.
Certainly, the overall picture from the latest AA/WARC forecast for 2018 suggests a pick-up in TV fortunes, pencilling in an upturn of 2.3% this year after a drop of 3.8% last year.
Ok, back to the retailers…Liberum also points out the contrasting experience of two large US retailers over the Christmas period. One, Macy’s, increased its TV spend – to around $32m – over December and saw same-store sales rise 1.3% in Q4, well above analyst estimates, and then 3% in January alone. Online sales also increased.
Contrast that with Sears, which took all its money out of TV in December and went big online and in social. And guess what? Same-store sales fell around 16% in November and December, and 8-12% in January.
Now, it is clear that both Macy’s and Sears are struggling with a host of issues (what retailer isn’t?) and it is no straight line between TV spend and sales, but even so…
A last word on WPP (sorry)
Apologies to those readers who thought this column might, at last, be a WPP-free zone.
I am not going to dwell on its woes, except to point out that it released its Q1 trading update this morning (30 April) and, well, it’s not the bloodbath it might have been.
Like-for-like net sales fell just 0.1%, versus the 1.0% analysts had predicted. Shares rose too – up 7% in early trading, although this may have more to do with talk of a sale or management buy-out of Kantar.
Does this make a difference? Long-term, no. Short-term it probably amounts to a small and temporary easing of the pressure.