THE NEWFASHIONED AGENCY
With roots in Auckland and Wellington, VMLY&R is shaking up the marketing landscape in both regions with a string of new business wins and revenue growth. Managing Director Fleur Head shares her vision for the agency as it embraces innovation, tech and ne
VMLY&R IS A RELATIVELY NEW NAME IN THE LOCAL AND GLOBAL AGENCY LANDSCAPE – WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
As well as an unwieldy collection of scrabble pieces, our name comes from the global merger two years ago of VML, a technology and CX agency, and Y&R, a long-standing creative BX agency. At its heart, it was a merger created to fit the changing marketing landscape, so clients could build connected brands in an integrated way, with an integrated agency.
Instead of clients managing multiple agency relationships and trying to connect up left-brain and right-brain thinking from separate agencies, they have an agency that develops a total connected ecosystem for their brands. This model is proving very successful for VMLY&R globally, with huge client growth – and last month we were named Campaign Network Agency of the Year in the US.
HOW DOES THIS INTEGRATED MODEL PLAY OUT IN NEW ZEALAND?
Integration is even more important in New Zealand, because with our limited resources we need to be more nimble than other markets. When you’re trying to get a collection of specialist agencies to work together in a cohesive way, not only does it take more time, but yyou also have to pay for a certain amount of duplicate resources, and deal with differing agency agendas and values. When your media team, production team and creative team are all sitting metres apart, it’s much quicker and easier to respond to live campaign data results coming in or external changes.
We like all our team members at VMLY&R to be T-shapers – as well as their area of specialism, they need to have a broader understanding and appreciation for all parts of the customer journey. But it also relies on them knowing when they don’t have the right expertise in a certain area and that it’s time to bring in the appropriate specialist.
WHAT CHANGES ARE YOU SEEING IN MARKETING CAMPAIGNS?
Technology has enabled us to do away with the ‘launch and leave’ campaign. We now hold back budget to be able to adapt and optimise as live results come in.
The other great thing technology has enabled is the ability to get more nuanced with audience segmentation and messaging. Instead of honing down to one mass message that works for the majority of the audience, we can now also connect with the harder-to-reach audiences with bespoke messaging, channels and messengers that work for them. One example of this is our recent work on the Elections 2020 campaign, where our connected ecosystem meant we produced more than 500 different pieces of content, achieving a huge uplift in the number of people voting for the first time.
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE AGENCY OF THE FUTURE LOOKS LIKE?
Right from when I started at VMLY&R, we’ve talked about creating a ‘new-fashioned agency’. What I mean by this is that as well as embracing tech and innovation, the way the agency behaves needs to change too. We’re not interested in feeding egos, or delivering to a self-centred agency-awards agenda, or playing the agency game. We’re driven by making a meaningful difference to Aotearoa alongside our clients.
We believe in respect and partnership. He waka eke noa. For our clients, this means being in the waka together – we don’t ‘sell’ to our clients, we’re on the journey together. We love it when clients choose to spend time working from our offices and co-creating with us.
For the diverse audiences of Aotearoa, this means our staff need to get out of the agency bubble and spend time with real New Zealanders in their communities. It’s for this reason we set up our Te Ara Mahi workexperience programme with youth from Taita College, hoping to create better pathways into our industry. And we’ve been working hard on our cultural competency journey, putting in place changes to live up to the principles in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.