Dan Clays: agencies must innovate for growth and talent
The Media Leader interview
Dan Clays, Omnicom Media Group UK CEO, talks to Mediatel News about agility, creating an industry talent wants to stay in and pitching.
There is one show that gets the whole Clays family together in front of the TV.
Channel 4’s The Great British Bake Off is when “the Venn diagram overlaps” and every member of the family is happy to watch the same thing with phones off, Clays says smiling.
The Omnicom Media Group UK CEO always wanted to work in advertising, but says it was specifically media that quickly became “an area of fascination” for him. He was also drawn to the “very entrepreneurial” nature of the media industry, being close to the impact of investment in growing a client’s business.
“I discovered the media agency world and what I loved about it was genuinely the blend of being able to be really creative with how you think about reaching audiences, but at the same time, applying some science to that. It blended the creativity and the commerciality of communication,” Clays remarks.
He says the media industry has “never been more interesting and exciting”, and with that, the role and importance of media agency and the breadth of services they provide is “more elevated than it’s ever been”, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. Media agencies’ services now range from big brand media campaigns, performance marketing, ecommerce, to the customer experience, he notes.
Agility and innovating for growth
Clays initially “cut his teeth” as a TV buyer on Cadbury’s and Britvic while at Carat in 1998, being interviewed as an entry level graduate by Jenny Biggam, now owner of independent agency the7stars.
He moved to PHD and then shifted to digital around the height of the .com boom working his way up over a decade to MD and CEO of BLM-owned Quantum Digital which sold to Havas Media.
He spent a few years in that arrangement before going to OMD UK, where he became CEO in 2012, and now heads up holding group Omnicom Media Group UK which includes agencies OMD UK, MG OMD, Hearts & Science, and PHD UK.
He is speaking to Mediatel News ahead of the upcoming Mediatel Media Leaders Awards, for which Clays is one of four nominees for the prestigious Grand Prix prize.
Clays highlights “agile access” as the common thread behind the holding group’s success over the last 12 to 18 months, with agency wins such as the UK government, Chanel, Peloton, British Airways, and Compare the Market.
This “evolving operating model” means it can adapt and “drill down” into capabilities and workstyles from its differentiated agencies, from multicultural marketing to data privacy, so it can customise work for clients and add to an agency proposition as needed.
This does not come without its challenges, which include adapting to the accelerating transformation of the media landscape, the dramatic change in how people consume media and the new breadth of services media agencies are expected to offer, while being accurately predictive of trends.
Clays points to responsible marketing, the video marketplace, data privacy compliance, sustainability and measurement as just some changing elements to keep an eye on in future.
Adapting to changing customer needs and media is “critical” and only possible, Clays says, with “a correct culture of collaboration” and willingness for Omnicom’s agencies to support each other.
Innovating for growth is critical for the business and the CEO. Clays refers to founder of Twitter and current CEO of Square, Jack Dorsey, who said at an event: “In a nutshell, the CEO of a group, that job is to make sure you’re growing in here and into the future. You’ve got to have one eye on how the business is transforming and so that you continue to always be relevant in market.”
Making the industry somewhere people want to stay
This innovation is not just tied to business outcomes, but also talent. A “number one priority” for Clays is to make the industry more inclusive and attractive for talent to join but also stay in.
This is a concern expressed by many trade bodies and agencies, with the AA’s president Alessandra Bellini making it a focus of her speech at the RENEW 2022 conference.
“I think you’ve got to keep innovating. It is absolutely critical both in terms of your product, but in terms of how you set up your operating models, innovating in how you are enabling talent to be successful,” he comments.
Clays adds: “We want to be a fully-resourced business, I think I speak probably for all agencies, that it’s an absolute priority that we have an industry that everyone wants to stay in, be part of, enjoys working in.”
Creating and looking after an industry that sets up talent to succeed is linked to leaders role-modelling the right kind of behaviours, he affirms.
This involves “being smart and creative” with what that future looks like as people are now looking to work in different ways as a result of the pandemic.
Clays says Omnicom wants to “create the best of both worlds” and leaders have a responsibility to think about wellbeing of their employees, especially given the ongoing industry-wide pitching process review by the IPA and ISBA.
Trusted relationships with clients
The IPA and ISBA launched The Pitch Positive Pledge earlier this year to focus on overhauling the pitching process to prioritise better mental health, less wastage, fewer costs and more effective work.
The nature of the pitching process is now under the microscope, especially given the difficulties with virtual pitching over the pandemic and the toll it can take on staff.
On the subject of pitching, Clays says building “highly-trusted” and longer-term relationships with clients are a “big opportunity”.
He says: “It has to be a trusted relationship and then as you as your team spend more time with the clients and across more key stakeholders in the clients’ business, it opens up genuinely, more opportunities to clients. If you can do that without pitching, then it’s clearly a very effective model for both the clients and for the agencies.”
“Then the knock-on effect of that is that every three years the client doesn’t feel compelled that they need to pitch because you are an absolutely critical business partner, so it’s really a win-win, win for the client in that they’re getting more value out of the agencies that they work for and at the same time, it creates longer-term relationships for us and our clients,” he adds.
See the full shortlist for Mediatel’s Media Leader Awards 2022, with the winners to be announced on 23 February.
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