M&C Saatchi unveils global consulting structure

M&C Saatchi has launched a global consulting division as it seeks to move beyond advertising solutions and help clients solve bigger business problems.

The M&C Saatchi Consulting team includes: Amanda Quested, head of group marketing & communications, Rob Caldwell, head of operations & production, Patrick Guerrera, APAC Lead, M&C Saatchi Consulting & CEO of Re Group, Jason Polycarpou, operations & production director.

M&C Saatchi is launching a global consulting business as the independent agency group seeks to partner with clients to solve business problems beyond advertising services.

The consulting division will operate as an agile team to pitch and advise on new business and existing clients. The business aims to bring together the various specialisms within the global M&C Saatchi Group including loyalty and CRM, data and analytics, design and experience, and product innovation, in addition to digital content, marketing and growth consulting.

M&C Saatchi Consulting will be led by Damian Symons as the UK-based global CEO with a six-person executive leadership team drawn from key businesses through the company. Asia-Pacific operations will be led by Patrick Guerrera, in addition to his remit as global chief executive of Re, M&C Saatchi’s design and experience agency. Guerrera also leads the Yes Agency for M&C, which operates as Optus’s in-house agency.

Mr Guerrera will be supported by a team of executives including M&C Saatchi head of group marketing and communications Amanda Quested, managing director Ben Harrison, data and analytics lead James Collier, insights lead Samy Mardolker, executive creative director Andy Thomas, head of operations and production Rob Caldwell and operations and production director Jason Polycarpou.

The consulting division will form a key part of the agency’s new structure, which focuses on five specialisms; advertising, performance, world services, passions and consulting.

The strategy is the vision of M&C Saatchi global CEO Zaid Al-Qassab, who joined the business in May. Mr Al-Qassab spoke to The Growth Agenda for his first interview and shared his plans to adopt a “connected network proposition” and seek out briefs that “pose business problems and look for consumer-oriented solutions”.

According to Mr Guerrera, the aim is “to bring world-class, upstream, strategic thinking to the broader M&C Saatchi offer”.

“Around the world, there are some astonishing capabilities that were built into specific M&C Saatchi companies, a data business, a marketing consulting /growth agency, Re in Australia is one of the largest brand and experience design businesses. So, we realised we will be stronger together.”

While Mr Guerrera said the move “doesn’t mean market-leading brands like Re necessarily will disappear”, the attention is on enabling a group focus to reach across markets and draw capabilities and skill sets from the specialist agencies, and replicating these models in other markets. “It’s not about consulting sitting on its own. It’s about how consulting will be part of this new integrated front of M&C Saatchi,” he said.

While M&C Saatchi Consulting is in soft launch in the APAC region, the global business is already pitching, with Mr Guerrera revealing “there have been a number of wins in the United Kingdom, in the Middle East”.

“We’re starting with some fundamental questions: How does this business create value for itself? How does it create value for customers? And how do we as consultants look at how we enable, amplify and execute on that value creation model and growth strategy?

“Customer experience, brand experience and the digital experience are often siloed away from marketing. We see huge opportunities through consulting and an internal agency model to help organisations close down the gap. As the quote goes: ‘Innovation happens in the cracks of the silos.’ I think we’ve got a job to do to break those cracks open, and fill them with ideas, strategy and thinking that can enable sustainable growth.”

The move follows years of industry debate around the benefits of consulting models versus advertising models, which has seen some of the large management consultancies, including KPMG and Deloitte, create digital advertising and marketing services divisions.

The most successful example of the integration of marketing and advertising services within the consulting model has been demonstrated by Accenture and its Accenture Song agency business, which includes The Monkeys, one of Australia’s most respected creative agencies, alongside global creative powerhouse Droga5 and iconic design agency Fjord, among others.

But M&C Saatchi Consulting is deliberately a very different model to Accenture Song, said Mr Guerrera. “Accenture has three pillars, it has management consulting, a design arm, and then Accenture Song, which is very much the creative arm of that model.

“What we know and we believe in our hearts is that we are still part of a creative powerhouse called M&C Saatchi. So rather than creativity being bolted on, M&C Saatchi Consulting has been brought in to deliver upstream momentum and amplification that’s going to deliver even bigger strategic capabilities to a fantastic creative proposition. We hope to find something more distinctive, because it is still homed in creativity as well as owning creativity.”