BLUE 449
Blue 449 has pulled off a feat, enjoying the benefits of being part of a global holding company while seemingly being able to detach itself from much of the corporate politics.
The highlight was the Asda win when Blue 449 teamed up with sister agency Saatchi & Saatchi for a combined creative and media account offering, snatching the business without a pitch in April.
Critics may carp that Saatchi & Saatchi was in the driving seat, but Blue 449’s debonair leadership team (the top five is all-male, but the agency says 40% of its senior leadership is female) have been more than just passengers, shuttling to and from Asda’s Leeds home to manage the biggest media account move of the year.
The Publicis Groupe connection paid off a second time as Weight Watchers, which already used Saatchi & Saatchi as its creative agency, moved its media to Blue 449 later in the year.
Integration has moved a step further as Blue 449 agreed to relocate after the year-end into a building next door to Saatchi & Saatchi’s new office on Chancery Lane – an irony that will not have been lost on M&C Saatchi, which still retains a 24% stake in the media agency.
Blue 449’s independent past means that Phil Georgiadis, the chairman, and Simon Davis, the chief executive, retain a free-spirited ethos, and their newbusiness success has allowed them to carve their own role within Publicis Media’s streamlined global set-up.
The agency makes much of its lack of corporate legacy and its “open source” approach to different technology – the work for KFC on Snapchat geo-filters was a good example.
It says a lot that Publicis Groupe rebranded the Optimedia Blue 449 global network as just Blue 449 in December. It obviously expects even more in 2017.