Rebalancing away from the metropolitan bubble
Dominic Mills shakes off his London bias to look at what’s happening in the ad economy in other areas of the country
For as long as I’ve written a column (not just for Mediatel News but in a previous life too) I’ve been contacted three or four times a year by readers asking “hey, why do you never write about life outside London?”.
To which the answer is: guilty as charged. The various reasons, all of which embarrass me, include: location, contacts, laziness, lack of perspective, bias and…I could go on.
But news this week of the merger of two non-London agencies, Home and IMA, headlined as the creation of a Leeds-based powerhouse, which together employ 400 staff and plan to add another 200 over the next three years, makes me feel the need for a correction.
I knew vaguely of Home, but can’t explain why or how. IMA…news to me. So too is the fact that the combined entity bills £70m which means, according to Nielsen figures for 2020, it would currently rank 23rd in the top 100 agency table. Not bad.
Better still, when you realise that that’s just below VMLY&R and Krow and above such blue-chip (and avowedly London-based) shops like Wunderman Thompson, M&C Saatchi, Anomaly, Iris and Cheil.
But leaving IMA Home to one side for the moment, I don’t think it’s a freak or some kind of regional anomaly.
While the UK at large waits for Boris’ levelling-up programme to get under way, or going further back George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse scheme — either of which will take a long time, if ever, to come to fruition — it feels to me like the rebalancing of the ad economy away from London is well underway.
It’s driven by digital, starting with the clients. One of the driving forces is the way Manchester, for example, has become a home for fast-track digital businesses.
Some will be familiar, like AO.com, The Hut, Boohoo (and its offshoots like ‘I Saw It First’ and ‘Pretty Little Thing’), Pharmacy2You, Missguided, Very, investment platform A.J. Bell and Booking.com. To an entity, they are committed advertisers, including TV.
Equally, there’s a thriving digital/tech start-up scene throwing up names like Yaaas!, Pillo and Evergreen Life. Here’s a good piece explaining Manchester’s strengths.
It’s a good example of the cluster effect, whereby the presence of a successful or large entity attracts the like-minded, which in turn sees the development of an eco-system that then attracts more.
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The same effect can already be felt with the presence of the BBC in Manchester — skilled creative, production and digital staff cluster around it — and which will be given a further push as Channel 4 fully develops in Leeds.
I should add that the next series of Dragons’ Den will feature Manchester digital entrepreneur and founder of local e-commerce player Social Chain, Stephen Bartlett as the latest dragon. He’s only 28, FFS, which means he’ll lower their average age and increase their digital savviness in one go.
One media owner based in Manchester tells me that much of the growth in local agencies, more media and digital than creative, is coming from these digital businesses.
Mediacom North, which has three offices outside London, includes digitally-driven clients like Cinch, Moonpig and Tombola.
Boohoo, for example, has just given a large chunk of its business to the Sheffield agency Rise at Seven, with the agency opening in Manchester off the back of the win.
By contrast, legacy players in the area like Asda, Morrison’s, Iceland, Warburton’s and the Co-op tend to give their business to London agencies, the outstanding exception being Aldi (ok, Birmingham/Coventry-based), which is a long-time client of McCann Manchester.
So, what’s the explanation?
I can think of two: one, I suspect that many London agencies are still hide-bound by disciplinary silos and cumbersome processes, which is the sort of “you’ll-have-to-talk-to-Fred-in-search-to-sort-that-out” thinking that drives digital clients nuts but with which legacy clients are more comfortable; and two, smaller non-London agencies, especially the independents but even the network offshoots, are more entrepreneurial, which means they are more likely to find common ground with owner- or founder-managed digital clients.
Then we have the talent issue. My contact says that this is the biggest factor holding the north-west back and, they say, is more prevalent in creative agencies than media, which may explain why it is the latter that are flourishing and the former that have some way to go.
But of course, post-pandemic, as individuals found they no longer need to be in the London office, that could well change. It used to be that geography or location could be a career inhibitor. But no longer.
Longer-term this can only be a good thing, not just because it benefits the wider economy but also if it helps the industry escape its metropolitan bubble. It’s always been there (and I confess I have had my moments in it too).
But it seems to me it’s got worse — as shown up by this terrific piece about the GB News ad boycott by a media planner, and work by Reach’s Andrew Tenzer, the latter looking at the gap between the value systems of the media and marketing glitterati, found almost exclusively in London, and the rest of the UK.
The industry, rightly, bangs on about diversity. But diversity is many things, not just ethnicity, education or sexuality but also location and community. Go north.
A tune from the devil
They say that the devil has all the best tunes, and while I wouldn’t go quite as far as to say Facebook was a wholly diabolical entity, it flirts too close too often for my taste.
Nevertheless, I’ve seen the below ad for Portal, Facebook’s video-calling service, a few times in the last week.
It features two sisters, at least one of whom is deaf. One, nervously, is preparing for a date — after many months in lockdown, hence her nerves.
Via Portal, her sister, using signing, reassures her. “Try that jacket,” she signs. “You look just like mum,” she adds, approvingly.
“No, you do,” the other retorts.
It’s brilliantly simple and emotional, all the more effective because the lack of sound compels you to watch closely, but without manipulation. Which, I think, is more than you can say generally about Facebook.