Bohemia, a media agency under the mantle of M&C Saatchi, is rolling out a new positioning to begin 2023 – that of an agency that moves people through handcrafted, memorable media.
AdNews spoke to Paul Hutchison, CEO of Bohemia, about what prompted the rebrand, the opportunity for mass personalisation that he sees and why the human touch for clients trumps an over-reliance on technology.
Hutchison said that over his first three months in the role – he came to Australia in November 2022 after a four-plus year stint at Wavemaker in the UK – he’s spent a lot of time listening to clients, the industry, Bohemia’s people and the wider M&C Saatchi group, both about the market here and about Bohemia itself.
“What I heard were two things - the first is that, without a doubt, during the past decade Bohemia has been one of the leading media agencies here, but maybe within the past three or four years, we've not been as present in the market as maybe we should have been or had been before.
“Maybe that's because we were slower to come out of COVID or whatever it might be, but it just felt as though we were a little bit quiet. People were interested to know what was going on here, but we weren't really telling anyone.
Hutchison said that when he speaks to clients, they talk to him about wanting unique solutions that are bespoke to the opportunities and challenges that they face.
“Handcrafting is really at the heart of everything we do, because we can't take media solutions off the shelves - we need to really think deeply about the specific opportunities and challenges that our clients face and handcraft the best solutions for them to grow.”
The brand refresh, which also comprises a new logo, came about through M&C Saatchi Australia’s very own in-house branding agency, Re.
“We started with our positioning, which is that we're an agency that moves people through handcrafted, memorable media. We had a number of workshops with our brilliant colleagues at Re, which was a big learning curve for me as I’ve never done this before, but it was a really enjoyable process in the way they approached us and the way they got under the skin of our business.
“I went into it thinking we would have a knitted logo or a stitch logo or something that looks handcrafted, but they challenged our thinking more about the dynamism of what handcrafted means. When you see the logo, and you see a lot of the digital assets and the dynamism within that - the things we've created for things like LinkedIn and Instagram and all of our social channels - you really begin to see what handcrafted means for our business.”
The new Bohemia logo
Although he’s only been in Australia a short time, Hutchison said that he doesn’t see a significant amount of differences between the Australian and British media agency landscape.
“I haven't come over here and found stark differences. What I've found is an energetic and hungry team of people that want to do great work for their clients. That's the thing that I've really felt in my time at Bohemia - the commitment to our clients and the passion our teams have to create brilliant work that we put out into the world that is effective, memorable and importantly, that we create through really deep collaboration with our clients and our media partners as well.
“I do think there's some real areas for growth and I think probably the biggest one that I've seen so far is the opportunity for more to be done in terms of mass personalisation at scale - DCO, as the industry calls it. I do think there's an opportunity here to really start thinking about how we can do more to segment audiences, and particularly in digital channels, to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time in the right place.”
Despite all the current chatter about artificial intelligence and how technology can unlock insights, Hutchison said that Bohemia is a firmly human-focused agency in how it does business for clients.
“It's the human touch that unlocks the insight that makes the difference. Of course, we're not saying machines and technology aren’t needed; we are definitely fueled by machines and technology, but led by people. I've never seen a machine come up with an insight, I’ve seen a human come up with an insight from data that technology has shown them.
“We work with a brand called Stingose (an insect bite gel) through Aspen Pharmacare Australia and Stingose work best works best in the 15 minutes after you've been stung, which suggests if you might be stung today when you go out, you probably need it in your bag before you go. But 90% or so of sales happened after the sting and it was applied too late to have a positive impact on reducing the sting.
“A human came up with that insight by spotting that when the purchase was made was afterwards. We developed a piece of work called the Stingdex, which is using data to inform us based on weather conditions, which can then predict what animals might sting at a particular time. So, we could tell people, ‘it's a high Stingdex day today, buy your Stingose before you go out’ – that insight around when the sting happens and that you need it before came from a human being analysing data and I've never seen a machine come up with something quite like that.”
After a launch event attended by more than 100 people and held at the transformed M&C Saatchi Group offices in the former Transport House on Macquarie Street, Sydney, Bohemia’s next move is a customer roadshow.
“We're going out on a roadshow and we're going to our partners to take them through the detail of our business plan as to how we're going to deliver that proposition in market for our clients, for our partners and for our talent. After that, it is 100% about the work we handcraft for our clients in partnership with our media partners and I want us to be judged on the work that we put out into the world.
“I'm a big believer in not talking about ourselves; from what I've heard from the market, we do need to talk a bit about Bohemia at the moment. After that, I want to talk about our clients, the opportunities and challenges that they face and develop, and create and handcraft brilliant work that helps them grow in their market and in their categories.”
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