The Joy/Razor outfit needs a bigger boat. It's looking for new premises after a bunch of business wins packed its Redfern offices to the rafters. Chairman Graeme Wills thinks the agency is now possibly the biggest independent in Australia. And he thinks that there are too few true independents operating without the constraints of international co-ownership, which is bad news for advertising.
The agency has hired 16 people after winning work for Samsung, The Sydney Opera House, The Iconic and Glassons. There's another big win in the offing which will boost its client roster but Wills can't yet mention it.
Nevertheless, the wins bring the agency's headcount to 75. Wills said the work for Samsung is a “significant” brand building exercise. It's not taken everything, and Leo Burnett remains very much on the roster, but Wills thinks that the win suggests that locally-owned independents have a better understanding about how to connect locally.
Half of the wins are for full service – including New Zealand fashion chain Glassons, which wants to expand its Australian footprint, as well as the Iconic and the Opera House.
For Samsung, the agency will undertake “connection planning”, which Wills describes as “the step before media planning … determining the best way to connect the idea to people and then the channel to put it in,” both above and below the line.
While the full service debate remains a topic of conversation and conferences, Wills thinks too few people are actually walking the walk. But, whether re-bundling media and creative or simply consolidating within those disciplines, he says clients want an easier life and independents are the ones with the agility to deliver.
“Some clients find it too difficult to have [disciplines] so separate, using different agencies for online, digital, community groups. They says 'it's just too hard'. It's easier to have someone saying 'here's the idea, how do we get it to market?'.
Media companies and agencies that do not have a full service offering would disagree, Wills admits. But the former Publicis Mojo chairman thinks that the big, networked agencies have to remain unbundled because its too hard for them to dismantle their structures and rebuild.
“It's not an easy thing to do. You have to invest. But I think it's the future. You have to connect the idea with where it is going to go.”
Those groups that have dismissed the idea as harking back to the past are both wrong and right, says Wills.
“It is that simple [that the future is the past]. Because the people that come up with the ideas are just as interested in where that idea is going to go. When it is not together, the opportunity for cross-over creative thinking doesn't happen and that is a lost opportunity.”
So the big holding groups will never be able to re-bundle and the return to full service will remain the preserve of the independents?
“The biggest issue they have is that they have separate P&Ls. So even if they buy a digital agency locally, that will stream into its digital division globally in terms of P&L reporting. Therefore it is almost impossible to integrate locally, so it is an inherent structural problem.”
He said, “never and can't are big words... but that is not the way they were built,” and if the holding groups were to re-bundle they would have to “de-construct and put it all back together again. That is a big task. Where you have reporting and P&Ls into single silos, it is very tough to collapse all that.
“I think they would like to do it but it is actually very hard. But the reality is they are not going to change much. They will insist their model is correct.”
Wills said Havas, which has stated that it intends to have its creative and media units eventually reporting via one P&L is the most advanced, but remains a work in progress.
“They talk about it a lot, but at some point they will have to deliver, you would think.”
Even if the holding groups decided that their multi-billion dollar and highly profitable corporate structures might not be the best way to proceed, Wills suggested that they would not be able to deliver the kind of creative thought that independents conjure by their very nature. He says there are not enough true independents in Australia.
“There are too few in Australia that actually are independent with no global interference.”
The industry needed to be “very supportive” of independent agencies, said Wills, admitting that he was clearly pushing his own envelope.
“Yes, but independents are what keeps things moving forward. In Australia there aren't that many true independents. We might be the biggest. I think that's unusual in a marketplace where most are internationally-owned, or where internationals have a significant ownership stake.”
Independents, he said, “can call – and do it – as they see it without outside influence.”
In fact, said the New Zealand citizen, he was “going to go to the Australian government and ask them why they were giving all this business to foreigners”.
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