This first article appeared in the November-December 2022 AdNews magazine.
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The past few decades have seen the industry shift from Mad Men lunches with contracts signed over three martinis.
Now as the marketing landscape is controlled by media agencies who hold the buying power, it’s no surprise that these businesses are starting to utilise a chief marketing officer (CMO) to ensure their agency has a clear branding direction and achieve business goals.
As the most senior marketing position, a CMO is a comprehensive role that requires an individual to juggle many moving parts and wear many hats.
Each part of Francis Coady’s dynamic career has unknowingly shaped him into the perfect CMO for the untraditional position within a media agency.
From managing old rock band Thirsty Merc, to children's group High Five, a list of Triple J hip-hop groups and the Bondi Short Film festival, Coady’s career has historically been entertainment based.
“An artist would come to me and I would help them exploit their copyrights, from publishing songs, touring arrangements and merchandising - I offered the full 360 of management,” Coady told AdNews.
Like Coady, Havas Media has cultivated an entertainment, instead of an advertising, ethos.
The group’s ecosystem of entertainment and culture is largely guided by the agency’s holding group Vivendi, which is a major shareholder of the biggest music company in the world Universal Music, owning around 80% of music content on YouTube.
Plus, the entertainment powerhouse also has ownership of Dailymotion, GameLoft and the giant European film house Canal Blues - owning Paddington Bear and John Wick films.
Therefore, the initial appointment of Coady as general manager of Havas Sports and Entertainment - the global brand partnership specialist division of the Havas Group - was a no-brainer.
“Having this entertainment backbone through the Vivendi ownership was probably the reason Mike Wilson came to me,” Coady said.
After saying no for about two years, Coady eventually departed his management business and took up the Havas Sports and Entertainment role which required him to set up the Australian division from scratch.
“I spent the next five years basically building the business around existing clients, new client wins and targeting major partnerships.
“One of the first big clients we won was Bupa, and the second was Gillette who have been a client for six years now.”
Havas Sports and Entertainment Australia is now a multi-million dollar operation with a slew of international industry awards from working with local and global clients including NRMA, CGU, NSW Environmental Protection Agency, Avis, Budget and KAYO to name a few highlights.
Then Virginia Hyland was appointed CEO of Havas Media Group Australia and she asked Coady to step out of his day-to-day role of running Havas Sports and Entertainment and take a more senior role helping her run the whole company.
“I recognised that Havas Media could benefit from the effort and energy Francis delivers when creating marketing communication plans,” Hyland said.
“His ability to share innovative and award-winning work, celebrate our industry leading talented team in a way that engages and piques interest, is exceptional.”
Coady was hesitant at first and asked what the role would look like. And Hyland essentially said: “Whatever you want. I want to build a role for you.”
Roped in with the role’s flexibility, Coady said yes.
“When you work for yourself, titles and stuff are nebulous, because you don't really care about the title; I care about the output of the work,” Coady said.
“We talked about a chief commercial officer role, which is ostensibly straight commercials and business, but Virginia knew that wasn't me, even though I love that side of the world.
“She came to the conclusion that the CMO role was for me as it’s creative element excited me.”
What does a media agency CMO actually do?
Having a CMO means Havas is ahead of the game because as Coady has found, the C-level role is a solution to un-siloing the advertising industry, creating a more unified end-to-end marketing process.
“A CMO is a direct correlation between full end-to-end marcoms of a business and sales - that's the whole business end-to-end,” Coady said.
“So why not treat a 340-person business the same as your client who is half the size and also has a CMO?
“My job right now, in relation to communicating with an audience, is essentially the biggest communication channel.
“I've had phone calls from mates in other holding groups saying, ‘we need a real hand with this because we've got 1,500 employees, or 1,800 employers, and we don't have a unified comms to market’.”
Being a CMO is a big role, but Coady has implemented an acute structure of the responsibilities, dividing the role into three parts to ensure he can keep up with demands.
“The first section of the role is internal and external communications,” he said.
“Anything to do with Havas Media Group in any employment programs, approaches to market, corporate wins, initiatives with clients - anything like that, I'll work very closely with PR to formulate comms.
“Basically, my PR team and I work out how we can build and market a narrative around what the hell we're doing at Havas Media.
“The second part is existing and new client relationships - talking with clients, discussing their needs and understanding what other services they'd like to explore.
“And then the new business side of things, where I'm constantly talking to people in the market and my network of people I’ve built over the last 25 years to source new clients and accounts.
“But new business is also largely derived from me scouring the net to find gaps where we think an existing client might want to use our services - I also get contacted now for new business.
“Those two are the two core roles, but the big love of mine is executively producing on bigger and larger format content projects.”
One of Coady’s recent EP works saw him as the series creator for Destination New South Wales’ The Long Road series, which took two passions from the campaign’s target demographic – music and travel - to create a six-part content series launched across social media.
The series brought together music and travel seamlessly by taking six critically acclaimed Australian artists on road trips across NSW, showcasing the stunning landscapes and unearthing the local community spirit.
The series reached 7.3 million unique users across AU and NZ, featuring some of Australia’s biggest music artists including Amy Shark, Guy Sebastian, Baden Donegal from Ocean Alley, Troy Cassar-Daley, Polish Club and Connie Mitchell from Sneaky Sound System.
“That was a real passion point for me which kept my creative brain going, outside the coms and the corporate side of new business,” Coady said.
While the first two parts of the role takes up most of Coady’s time, he still gets tapped on the shoulder every single week to sit in on creative sessions because “I’m an EP at heart,” he said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MenpNvJsWdY
The Long Road Hype Reel via Havas.
What is a CMO’s biggest challenge?
“I think internally, the compression of time is always the biggest thing.
“Sometimes more bureaucratic activity can take considerably larger amounts of time and that eats into the productivity of new business which takes productivity time away from creativity.
“Personal life is another thing as I have a two-and-a-half-year-old baby, but it's just a fine balancing act that I have to manage.
“Externally, I am surprised that there's still a lot of learning around the power of entertainment in the advertising industry.
“Now the industry is starting to understand that entertainment is a great driver and a connector to consumer’s passion, but I think it was a problem that the advertising industry wasn't looking at that earlier.
“Prior to that they were looking at a creative idea in isolation of the passions of the consumer and not looking through the eyes of the consumers to see their passions.”
How to tap into the consumer’s passions
“A consumer might be interested in croquet or ballet or politics or corporate social responsibility or whatever it is, but understanding that passion and really getting into the intricacies of why a consumer is passionate about something will enable brands to target better.
“It's been great to see this transformation over the last eight years to hyperfocus on consumer passions, but I still don't think we were doing that enough.
“The Americans have been doing it for 60 years; just look at the football halftime shows with its integration of Pepsi and hip-hop.
“Look at cigarettes and film – it’s a great tragedy, but they understood that the passion of the consumer was going to films, so shove a cigarette at them to influence smoking at the cinema and then you’ve got them hooked on a product.
“When targeting any audience, we have to be agnostic about the channels and find out the specific passions those consumers are interested in.
“For example, look at the young hipsters in New York right now, they're all switching off social media and writing letters to each other, so Out-Of-Home could be a good option to target them.
“When those Hipsters walk out of a Brooklyn cafe and see this massive Out-of-Home ad for Apple, they might go and buy a new iPhone - but more importantly, we're not targeting them on digital because they're not looking at Instagram anymore.
“It's funny with new recruits, they all say they have digital experience because they think that’s most important. I’m more interested if they have brand experience or an understanding of cultural insights, because that creates the ideas that goes into the award-winning campaigns.”
Francis Coady presenting at MFA Ex 2022.
The power of entertainment
“Our job as marketers is to entertain the idea of consumption - I have to entertain you somehow, whether it's through your passion of saving koalas for NRMA, right through to passionate cricketers for Gillette.
“If I'm entertaining you, you will connect to that moment and you'll consume - sounds simple, but it's hard to do well because if the stories aren't done well, you have a problem.
“Far too often vast sums of money are spent on campaigns and are detached from people's passions; they're not even embedded, they're standalone creative pieces which do not connect.”
Coady’s case in point is Menulog, which as an emerging brand, used cultural icon Snoop Dogg.
“Menulog ostensibly used hip hop culture to sell an app that drives food consumption. That use of him as an entertainment driver is massively powerful and now Uber are too using that idea.”
Uber Eats followed with big name talent, from Kim Kardashian to Elton John.
“You connect to the consumer's interest through entertainment and if the products are good - boom, I've got you,” Coady said.
And this works for all audiences regardless of age.
“When you're older, your passions will change and morph, but you still have passions. Look at gardening! I don't think anyone's tapped gardening properly which is one of the single biggest passions people develop.
“Look at my mother; she is passionate about dance and will seek out high-end premium dance experiences such as Sydney Dance Company Australian and the International Ballet.
“Guess who is marketing at those moments? Premium high-end brands such as Lexus, LG TVs and Emirates Airlines.”
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