Getting teamwork right
The agency is on the comeback path under the stewardship of its former creative director
When creative director Brett Morris took over as group CEO of the FCB group a year ago, many in the ad industry didn’t rate his chances.
The refrain goes that creative people should stick to making ads and leave the business of building brands to those better qualified and who wear suits.
Morris says he’s been on a steep learning curve since he replaced the engaging John Dixon, who left not long after the agency’s loss of the big Vodacom account, which Morris concedes was a body blow to the agency. Since then the agency group has clawed back the rival Cell C account, and under Morris’s stewardship has been on an award-winning streak with its work on CocaCola.
Morris won’t officially confirm it, but the Financial Mail understands FCB is the preferred bidder for the lucrative SA Tourism account and will take it over in a few weeks after a lengthy pitch process.
Morris calls the account a “national call-up” for any agency, agreeing that promoting the SA brand in the midst of the current visa restriction debate, among other issues, would be one of the toughest jobs the agency has ever tackled.
In his 12-month tenure Morris has also moved swiftly to give meaning to the collaboration and integration model that many agencies are preaching but few are getting right.
The FCB group in SA consists of several self-standing agencies, including the digital shop Hellocomputer and the PR company Redline. Often these entities end up competing with each other to reach targets.
To promote greater co-operation among the units, Morris has implemented a leadership incentive scheme based on group success achieved for a client. While the model is still being bedded down, Morris says the idea compels interagency teams to think more robustly about best solutions rather than output from their own division.
Morris, who admits he’s more adept around a balance sheet than he was a year ago, is obsessed with turnaround time as the fastchanging consumer landscape militates against campaigns being briefed, developed and executed over months, not days or weeks.
FCB client teams now have cross-discipline representation, which Morris says has reduced meetings and followups. Speed and quality have become imperatives in the business, he says, and he likes the idea of clients spending more time in the agency engine room to save time. Clients, he says, will have to learn make decisions more quickly. He also joins other ad agency leaders in saying the remuneration model needs to be reviewed so as to give incentives for results.