M&C Saatchi develops first regional hub in Southeast Asia

M&C Saatchi is pooling its resources in Southeast Asia in a move it claims enables it to operate as a regional network. It is the first time the agency group has developed a multi-market hub, and is part of worldwide CEO Moray MacLennan's simplification strategy.

The Southeast Asia hub brings together the agency's Singapore, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur offices, as well as its media buying agency, M&C Saatchi Performance. 

Each agency has different specialties and expertise, and M&C Saatchi is hoping that by pooling them together it can offer full-service capabilities and win more regional clients.

M&C Saatchi Indonesia, which is three-and-a-half years old and the fast-growing agency in the network, has clients across banking, finance, tourism and beauty, including L'Oreal.

M&C Saatchi Malaysia, at 17 years old, brings established experience and a concentration of clients across telcos and hospitality. Singapore acts as more of a headquarters for regional clients and M&C Saatchi Performance, which offers expertise across around research, planning, and data engineering.

The hub will be led by Richard Morewood, CEO of M&C Saatchi Asia; Anish Daryani, CEO of M&C Saatchi Indonesia; Lara Hussein, CEO of M&C Saatchi Malaysia; and Kabeer Chaudhary, managing director of M&C Saatchi Performance APAC. In addition, the strategic and creative leaders from the four divisions will work more closely together, and the hub will be able to tap specialist divisions Clear and The Source.

The creation of the Southeast Asia hub comes just days after M&C Saatchi Singapore's leadership team all exited to take over ownership and operation of Dayre, a female-focused subscription platform. M&C Saatchi acquired and relaunched Dayre in 2019. The platform has now been passed over to the six former Singapore leaders: Tanuj Philip, Anthony Khoo, Toh Han Ming, Sangram Sengupta, Katherine Teo and Nicholas Leow.

Morewood, who is leading Singapore in the interim, revealed that the agency group is planning to hire a new leadership team for the market. He is "not in a rush" and wants to find "the right people who are the entrepreneurial type and who fit into the M&C Saatchi Network".

The Asia leader emphasised that the Southeast Asia hub is "not a cost reduction exercise" and will not lead to a reduction in headcount.

"It's much more about being able to offer integrated expertise to clients, rather than trying to reduce cost, which was never the objective," he said.

How the hub will work

M&C Saatchi's model differs from that of the 'big six' agency networks. Each agency under the network operates independently, with agency leaders often owning minority stakes in their business. This has meant there is little sharing of resources or consistency across markets. The Southeast Asia hub will be the first time M&C Saatchi agencies will pool skills and resources globally.

Morewood told Campaign Asia-Pacific that this is "the first clear demonstration of how we're simplifying our offer to clients", a strategy laid out by MacLennan in January when he took over as chief executive of the listed company.

"There's a lot of excitement globally," Morewood said of the hub.

While M&C Saatchi's model has made collaboration difficult in the past, leadership now view it as its strength.

"We've seen a lot of agency networks take the hub approach," Chaudhary said. "Ours is actually quite unique, because we are not just one centre of excellence. Each of us are independent and successful businesses, and we are choosing to work with each other because we recognise that the talent in the other team is something that we need for our individual businesses to prosper."

M&C Saatchi is certainly not the first agency group to create a hub in Asia. But Daryani believes that other agency networks fail to offer local market expertise on a regional level.

"Other integrations, like those by WPP and Publicis, are still very localised," he told Campaign Asia-Pacific. "None of them have come forward and said 'we are going to offer this across the region to all our clients'. We've got partners in each market who have local ownership and they bring in the local expertise required, and we will now offer this on a regional level. This is a lethal combination."

While many APAC agency networks have chosen to hub specific expertise in one market, such as a performance, strategy or digital hub, M&C Saatchi believes this inhibits integration, and overlooks the importance of local expertise.

Hussein said: "I think a lot of agencies have tried strategy hubs and creative hubs, and I don't think it really works. It's important that it's integrated, because that's the whole point, right? And then the other thing is that, for example, if there was a new business pitch in Indonesia, then we would then form a team that would be the best. So it really gives us this freedom to actually choose who would be the best team to be able to work on that particular new business."

Daryani added: "Certain services like creative and strategy, which is very rooted in culture and in the social strata, will need to remain. But then certain expertise which are media agnostic or culturally agnostic, for example performance media, that can be centralised in Singapore but feed into all the local markets. Same goes for strategic functions like Clear, for instance, where they have the tools that we can implement in local markets using our local strategists."

The hub officially launches today (July 28), but the team has been working as a unit for several months already, according to the leaders. M&C Saatchi Indonesia was able to expand its remit with a beauty client into more markets by tapping the resources of Malaysia and Singapore. M&C Saatchi Performance has been able to pitch 360-degree work to clients, combining its digital planning expertise with the creative skills of the other agencies.

The group is taking an informal approach to the hub. There are no set rules as to what collaboration should look like, or how often the offices should pitch as one. The leadership team will continue to use WhatsApp as their primary form of communication, and don't see a pressing need to develop a formal platform.

"We think we have a much tighter team to deliver to regional clients than a lot of the other networks. Being a small network, we all get on and speak very regularly," explained Morewood. "We didn't want the bureaucracy that a lot of the other networks have, so we have tried to keep it as flexible as possible."

While the main objective of the hub is to win more regional clients, the leadership team expects this will also encourage a greater diversity of skills. 

"We've been quite insular in Malaysia," Hussein said. "So I think this is an opportunity for us to broaden our horizon and for us to create diverse teams with different perspectives, different cultures. I think the team is also very excited to have opportunities to work on different clients in Singapore and Indonesia."

Daryani added: "There's a lot in it for our teams. It can get pretty monotonous to be working and solving problems only in your local market. But if my strategy team gets involved in solving a business problem in Singapore or Malaysia, it expands their canvas, and the same goes for creative resources. It leads to diversity of thought, which is one of our founding pillars."