One of the biggest concerns Mandie van der Merwe and Avish Gordhan had before joining Saatchi & Saatchi as chief creative officers was the fact they were joining an agency which was without a chief creative for almost a year, after ex-CCO Mike Spirkovski departed in late 2022.
“We were hesitant about that and what it would mean. What were we inheriting? But what we soon realised was that we’d joined a creative department that’s held their own. There’s a real sense of hunger there,” Gordhan told AdNews.
The duo departed Dentsu Creative in November last year, having also worked in the creative departments of M&C Saatchi, cummins&partners and Whybin TBWA previously.
Since joining Saatchi & Saatchi in January, the pair are at the helm working with the agency’s connected clients including Toyota, Arnott’s, Visa and Ancestry, alongside other key clients such as Vodafone, Nescafe, Heineken, NRMA, TPG Telecom and Dettol.
van der Merwe says the creative duo’s focus for the next 12 months is getting to know their clients and understanding the team they’re working with.
“You’ve got to understand the nuts and bolts. The next 12 months is about reinforcing our role within our clients’ businesses as modern and as a future-focused agency that comes up with progressive ideas and solutions,” she says.
It’s about creating space, Gordhan says, but also taking fear out of the room.
“When you're trying to do work that is brave and bold and new and untested, it's a scary prospect not just for the agency, but for clients as well,” he says.
The other role the pair have had to play is to take that fear away, internally and with the agency’s long-standing clients.
“There’s been such long relationships that have been built up over time with our clients and with the business, and it's the way we're going to bring modern creative thinking to to their businesses, not just from a comms or marketing perspective, but also to solve other business problems that they have,” Gordhan says.
“Part of the job is making sure we get people to understand the comfort levels that are needed to actually make the right work.”
Everyone is of course living through tough economic times at the moment, van der Merwe says. The agency’s clients are responsive to that, and so is the creative duo.
“The way that I'm seeing clients being responsive is a focus on real, short term results, and I understand that. We have to make sure the engine keeps on ticking. And that’s not just the clients at Saatchi and Saatchi, I can see it as a trend that everyone in our industry is feeling,” she says.
There’s an opportunity for brands to resist the urge to only respond to what's in front of them, Gordhan says.
“The brands and businesses that look up and take a slightly longer view and look to the horizon at what's coming are probably going to be faster movers. Mandie and I often say ‘big brand’ thinking doesn't mean a lack of agility,” he says.
“There's a sense that when you do big brand thinking that it's a slow moving beast. I don't buy that as an argument. Big brand thinking is actually holding on to platforms, holding on to brand behaviours for longer so that you give people, audiences and your brands an emotional advantage.”
Saatchi & Saatchi have been lucky to have been part of and invited to multiple pitches recently, Gordhan says, enjoying some momentum on that front at the start of this year.
“It doesn't look like it's slowing down. I'm looking into the future, and I can see meetings lined up for the next three months that are pitch related,” he says.
The agency’s pitch plan revolves around continuing to be invited and simply to be in the running.
“The challenge with having a pitch plan is that it’s a bit like not being invited. If you don't get invited to the party, you can't wear your best dress. Our plan is basically to be invited as we can and then we show up from there,” Gordhan says.
On where the duo see the growth opportunities for the agency, van der Merwe says unlocking that growth comes through Publicis Groupe’s creation of bespoke agency teams.
“The Groupe can create these bespoke teams that surround a client, made possible by our connected platform of capabilities in a really practical sense,” she says.
“When we think we've got a great idea, we've got the ability to pull these different skill sets into a room so you get the smarts of media, data, tech, digital, social…whatever is specifically needed.”
“And then we build on that creativity and that idea, and what I can see is that it has this positive effect on the solutions that we're delivering for our clients. By banding together, we’re creating that growth, while also creating ideas to live in new and exciting ways.”
For Gordhan, he and van der Merwe have had conversations around “what are we going to do in the future?”
What the duo is focused on is the fact that this industry calls itself a creative one.
“We have to hone into creativity, to focus on communication solutions - that’s a historical thing. We’ve now got tightened budgets, a fragmented media landscape, the impact of AI on our industry and in-house agencies are becoming more prevalent,” Gordhan says.
Against this backdrop, Gordhan says the industry needs to systematically try to broaden how creativity can be applied.
“We need to be taking a broader view than just the creative industry as a communications industry. We need to expand on that,” he says.
The industry also needs to set the expectations with businesses that creativity is far broader than just communications, van der Merwe says.
“What we do as creatives in creative agencies is we look at everything from all angles. Give us more than just your comms problems. Give us something bigger, and then we can actually accelerate where your business can go.”
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