M&C Saatchi’s new global chief on the integrated future of agencies

M&C Saatchi’s new global chief executive Zaid Al-Qassab speaks exclusively to The Growth Agenda about how greater integration is the key for unlocking growth for businesses.

M&C Saatchi global chief executive office Zaid Al-Qassab

Global independent agency M&C Saatchi will adopt a “connected network proposition” across APAC as it seeks to drive growth, according to M&C Saatchi’s new global chief executive officer Zaid Al-Qassab.

Speaking exclusively to The Growth Agenda in Sydney in his first week in the new role, Mr Al-Qassab said the pressure for marketers to do more with less is creating greater opportunities for agencies to integrate the specialist skills within its networks to inform the entire customer experience.

Mr Al-Qassab is drawing on three decades of experience as a marketer including 20 years within the global powerhouse Procter & Gamble, where he served as managing director of P&G beauty brands, among other roles. He was also chief marketing officer of UK telecommunications giant BT and UK broadcaster Channel 4.

“We live in a moment of massive change, where the need has never been greater for agencies to help clients find a way through that,” Mr Al-Qassab said.

“No doubt the role of marketing leaders has grown exponentially in recent years. Marketers are sitting in more rooms, more often, as de facto chief operating officers, chief customer officers, chief product and data officers, and that creates a lot of opportunities for them and the agencies they trust to partner with and add value in a meaningful way.”

Mr Al-Qassab said this opportunity to drive growth for brands and “help clients find solutions in a messy, confusing world” is what fuelled his decision to leave the client world and move agency-side.

“I know the challenges clients face, and I’ve experienced agencies which serve clients needs brilliantly, and of course some that do it less well,” he said.

“It’s no longer, ‘hey, we’ll make you an ad’. Now it’s, ‘hey, we will solve your whole business problems’. This isn’t just about creative solutions, this is about being able to make something powerful and simple that connects with consumers, and that’s a really important positioning.”

“Clients now face a more complex and faster-changing world than ever before, so I believe integrated solutions are the way forward – responding to briefs which pose business problems and look for consumer-oriented solutions, and that’s what makes our integrated offer at M&C Saatchi so exciting. I leapt at the chance to lead such a well-positioned business.”

Mr Al-Qassab steps into the role following a period of significant upheaval for the global independent agency group, following the retirement of former global CEO Moray MacLennan last year. Mr MacLennan had been with the agency since its launch in 1995, joining shortly after Maurice and Charles Saatchi’s dramatic exit from Saatchi & Saatchi to open a new eponymously named agency.

While M&C searched for a new global CEO, non-executive chair Zillah Byng-Thorne stepped in as executive chair with a vision to simplify the business. Spurred by a decline in global revenue and profit in the first half of 2023, she kicked off a cost-cutting strategy that included the sale of M&C Saatchi’s stakes in subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Sweden and the consolidation of agencies across Asia.

Locally, the M&C Saatchi Group has been hit by senior staff departures, redundancies and the departure of high-profile accounts. However, the Australian business remains the biggest in the global network and continues to service some of the country’s biggest and most respected brands such as Woolworths and Optus.

Speaking of the change, Mr Al-Qassab said: “What hasn’t changed is our belief that brands are built through the experience a customer has with them. As such, our business has evolved to an experience-led proposition, fuelled by ­insight, increasingly deployed through technology and the owned channels our partners invest in every day.

“It’s a much broader canvas for creativity to play a role, and that requires a much deeper partnership with more integrated multichannel solutions.

“What you will see next is an ­increasingly connected M&C Saatchi network proposition and, in particular, an APAC regional approach that leans into our fast-growing capabilities including Performance Marketing, Sport & Entertainment, and Consulting. All delivered through flexible bespoke models, designed around the needs and capabilities of progressive organisations,” he said.

Harking bark to his foundational years at P&G, Mr Al-Qassab believes brands – and marketers – need to refocus on the core elements of marketing and brand building to help navigate the noise of the fragmented marketplace.

“The marketers (that are) thriving seem to be focused on delivering simplicity in this time of change,” he said. “(They are) clear on the role of owned channels versus bought, clear on the role of in-house capabilities versus external expertise worth paying a premium for. Above all, clear on the actual business problem, a deep understanding of the opportunity, and a belief that creative thinking should play a critical role across the organisation on the path to growth.”

He also agrees with a growing chorus of experts that marketers and creative agencies need to do a better job of learning the language of the boardroom.

“As a marketer, I would always say to my team, you better learn the language of the CEO and the CFO. Because if you cannot communicate to them why marketing services and creative solutions are so important, then you’re not even at the blocks. You don’t have to love that world, but you do have to understand it and be able to speak its language,” Mr Al-Qassab said.

“I have a burning belief that creativity drives businesses, and I don’t just believe that – I think I know that,” he said. “If you look at any successful business, it needs to find an edge that differentiates itself, or makes it stand out or touches people in ways that their competitors don’t. And those edges are rarely the factual things. It’s really hard to win on price and it’s really rare to win on pure product quality. So the edge that they get is usually a creative edge, it’s an idea, or an innovation in the market, or a very brilliant piece of communication that differentiates a brand and makes them stand for something and people believe they stand for it. We work in so many regulated markets, financial services, or telecommunications where the regulation means there’s never going to be huge differentiation in the core product. So you have to differentiate with creativity, with ideas, with communications, marketing, advertising and … with emotion, not just with facts.”