Harris Diamond, Chairman and CEO of McCann Worldgroup, reposes great faith in new APAC Head and India CEO, Prasoon Joshi; looks to beat Prime Minister Narendra Modi's avowed target rate of growth
Harris Diamond, Chairman and CEO of McCann Worldgroup, believes in rapid growth. In the two years that he has helmed the organization, he has accelerated the pace of growth in it and is vying with none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India to beat the new government’s target rate of growth. The new aggression at McCann Worldgroup has resulted in major business wins as well as creative accolades. In 2013, Worldgroup companies were recognized for creative excellence at an unprecedented level worldwide; this included the distinction of creating Dumb Ways to Die, the most awarded campaign in the history of the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity.
In India, apart from the Microsoft account which came with the global win, McCann has bagged Reckitt Benckiser’s Dettol (on project basis), and health insurance firm Cigna. Meanwhile, India CEO Prasoon Joshi, now APAC Chief, has won acclaim both for his creative contribution to the BJP campaign that brought Narendra Modi to power as well as for being President of the Titanium and Integrated Lions jury at Cannes this year. Diamond clearly has great faith in Joshi and the work that comes out of India, and is upbeat about the country’s new economic and political environment.
Talent and progress brighten the India story
Diamond was in India last month to announce the appointment of Joshi as the group’s new APAC Chief. Joshi, despite having China and Australia operations under him, will not shift base from India. This only means that McCann, apart from sitting on a mine of talent in India, also regards itself to be on the cusp of a growth curve. “The creative work we do here is pretty talked about – the Nescafe campaign with the stammering comedian, for instance. Prasoon brings a tremendous level of creativity to our clients, I’m hoping he’ll do the same for our other companies throughout Asia!” Diamond tells us, adding that winning Dettol, Microsoft and Cigna does not mean that the lookout for big clients will pause.
Joshi’s ‘hot seat’ appointment comes in the time of a major creative reshuffle at McCann Worldgroup. Earlier this year, Rob Reilly returned to the company as its Global Creative Chairman, while other stallions were being moved to different stables. Diamond is only more confident of the Group’s creative process now. “Rob believes very strongly that our creative product always needs to be better. We recently launched a campaign for which I received a wonderful letter from the client CEO, but Rob said to me, ‘It’s good but it could be better.’ The defining aspect of a great creative is never to be satisfied and I think Prasoon believes in this too,” he says, explaining that creatives are not engineers to create something and get ‘done’ with it.
Creative Council: Specs for a world view
In 2010, McCann formed a ‘Creative Leadership Council,’ a global think tank which would be in charge of its worldwide creative mandate, and incidentally, had appointed Joshi as its Executive Chairman. Its aim was to expose its 20,000 or so employees across 330 offices to the company’s best works, and Joshi believes it has succeeded in inspiring all teams. “We love to win awards, be it at Cannes or elsewhere – all those things are great – but when we sit in a Creative Council, we try to look inward, understand what is important for our clients, how it is important to big brands, where is the consistency, what exactly is the work that McCann considers great and how we must share that with everyone. If some offices are performing well, how can we inspire other offices who are not doing so well,” he explains.
“It has had a tremendous impact culturally,” Diamond adds, “One of the big issues for all our people is that they don’t get to see our outstanding work in other markets. For instance, we do great work in Romania – I get to see it, Rob and Prasoon get to see it because we all travel, but it also has to be brought alive to the other folks. One of the things we look at in the Creative Council is to understand different cultures, regions and socio-economic groups.” The Council is now headed by Andreas Dahlqvist, a Swede, Joshi and Washington Olivetto, McCann’s most recognized Latin American creative from Brazil.
Marketing insights from Truth Central
Another probable reason why the Group’s coffers are brimming with awards and rewards is the company’s global thought leadership initiative, Truth Central, and the wealth of insights it unearths for the benefit of clients. Truth Central does in-depth research on a new subject every three months and presents a study that covers up to 20 markets. The ongoing report is about globalization, and it’s worth asking Diamond how the initiative has fared over the years. “We did a study on shopping, the truth about shopping,” he replies, “In Latin America, we asked everybody in our offices in 31 countries to spend a day out and observe shopper behaviour. When you look at the resources we put into these, truth about affluence, truth about privacy, it helps inform our strategists, who advise our clients, and help define the briefs for our creatives, how they should think,” he explains.
An earlier global study was about privacy, where the findings in the US were different than they were in Europe, and those in Asia and China were different too. Diamond adds: “Here in India, people are more willing to give their data. In the US, they wanted something in exchange for their data. These insights are important when we come up with ideas, and understanding these things is very valuable for our clients.”
How valuable then, is Truth Central from the analytics or R&D units that most big clients already have? “It’s different,” Diamond answers, “most clients want marketing advice and counsel from us. Their analytics tend to be about metrics; but we are more about what does it take to succeed in the market, what you consider when you’re marketing. When they (the clients) have that information, they find us as an adjunct. We are not necessarily looking at any one product, but at the field in which the product exists, so when we talk about the truth about ‘affluence’, we are not necessarily talking just about designer bags or luxury cars, we are talking about the entire area of how people who are affluent think about the purchase of products.”
Perhaps it is with this culture of value additions for clients and global perspectives for employees that McCann has become a treasure chest of successful campaigns, with Diamond and Joshi as two of their brightest gems.
ABOUT MCCANN WORLDGROUP
McCann Worldgroup, part of the Interpublic Group (IPG), is a leading global marketing services company with 23,000 employees in more than 120 countries, comprising McCann Erickson (advertising), MRM//McCann (digital marketing/relationship management), Momentum Worldwide (total brand experience), McCann Health (professional/dtc communications), CRAFT (global adaptation and production), UM (media management), Weber Shandwick (public relations), FutureBrand (consulting/design), ChaseDesign (shopper marketing) and PMK-BNC (entertainment/brand/popular culture). The group works for global corporations such as Coca-Cola, General Mills, General Motors, L’Oréal, MasterCard, Microsoft, and Nestlé, as well as many regional and local clients in countries across the world.
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