ON THE MOVE

Talent is always on the move. And while agency folk are increasingly moving to the relative safety of client side, there are other suitors, namely the tech juggernauts and consultancies, which are both upping their creative game to try and snatch business away from ‘traditional’ agencies. The rise of the tech platforms have in some way facilitated the increasing in-house resource among clients as brands can communicate directly with consumers through many of these channels. And, just as media companies like TVNZ, Bauer and NZME have set up their own creative studios, so too have the tech companies. Last year, Special Group Australia’s founding creative partners Matty Burton and Dave Bowman left the agency to take over the Google Zoo operation across the Asia Pacific region, following Tor Myhren who crossed the floor from his role as president and chief creative officer at Grey to become vice president of marketing and communications at Apple at the end of 2015. Another international player making the move that year was Lars Bastholm who went from chief creative officer of Cheil USA to global chief creative officer of Google’s The Zoo. The following year it was Andrew Keller, former Crispin Porter + Bogusky CEO who joined Facebook as the global creative director for in-house creative team Creative Shop. His move saw Keller report to Creative Shop chief creative officer Mark D’arcy, a former Time Warner ad executive (and New Zealander) who joined the social media giant in 2011. Local creatives Tara Mckenty and Iain Nealie were snapped up by Google as creative directors for the APAC region about four years ago after showing promise at Whybin\tbwa and Saatchi & Saatchi, and Contagion’s Tom Bates went to work for Snapchat in 2017. Having largely stolen the strategic work off agencies and doubling down on digital transformation, the large consultancies are also expanding into the communications sector. This has been more obvious in the Australian market, where the big four have made a number of agency acquisitions and hired big names from the media, marketing and agency sector – like adland personality Russel Howcroft moving to PWC as chief creative officer, or Droga5 boss Sudeep Gohil joining KPMG as head of brand strategy, or a big chunk of Mccann Melbourne joining Deloitte. Accenture’s Ben Morgan says the changing needs of brands has demanded a new model that sees consultancy, creative and technology converging – bringing together brand strategy, design, communications, customer experience and product development at scale. “Accenture’s acquisition of creative agencies such as Karmarama and The Monkeys are driven by the need of this new, modern CMO, and it is proving a real differentiator. The ability to forge customer experience end-to-end better reflects the modern adland, which the traditional agency cannot cater for.”