Ghassan Harfouche, group CEO of the Middle East Communications Network, took on the additional role of APAC president in late 2021. Leading the APAC team remotely, especially in a time of travel restrictions, has been tough for the regional cohesion, though leadership has remained stable. 

A major change at the IPG holding group level saw IPG Health unify eight related brands, such as McCann Health and FCB Health, into one group. The agency business reporting structure was also realigned into three segments. As a result, McCann’s data now does not include McCann Health and Momentum, which could make its Asia-Pacific performance harder to compare. Operationally, however, McCann Worldgroup remained the same.

McCann Worldgroup has had slower business growth than the previous year but invested in DEI and sustainability initiatives across the region. It also won more awards in the past year, thanks to India’s strong performance in creativity and effectiveness. However, the agency still needs to address the problem of an increasing turnover rate.

Category 2022 2021 Business C   C+ Innovation B- C+ DEI and sustainability B+ B+ Creativity and effectiveness B B- Management B- B *2021 scores adjusted to new numeric scale. Read about the grading methodology

Business (C)

McCann Worldgroup continues to operate an open architecture business model in which employees are unbundled from discipline-driven silos to form multi-specialist teams. More often, this leads clients to deepen their specialisation and spend on more than one offering.

But the agency seemed to have difficulty in both upselling and winning new business in 2022. Across APAC, less than half of the top 20 clients increased spending and McCann Worldgroup’s pitch conversion rate dropped slightly compared to 2021. 

As a result, its top 10 clients and biggest new wins accounted for a smaller percentage of revenue than in 2021. While it was able to grow its profit margin, it only eked out marginal gain in new business while total revenue declined. 

APAC leadership attributed the overall decline and slowdown in some markets, such as China, to the pandemic, lockdown and reduced client spending. However, they also stressed that in the last quarter of 2022, the agency began seeing more pitches and wins in large markets like Japan, India, and China. Some strong markets, like the Philippines, however, reached double-digit organic revenue growth and high-profit margins

According to the Campaign AI New Business League, powered by R3, the agency was ranked ninth among creative agencies in APAC, despite not reaching the top 10 last year. The improved ranking however, is more a reflection of competitor performance than improvement from McCann Worldgroup. 

While McCann Worldgroup said goodbye to medical aesthetics brand Galderma ABO in Thailand, it avoided significant client losses in 2022. But the business lacks diversification and enough new business wins to grow the business. Overall, the performance rates under most competitors so we’ve downgraded them here below average.

Innovation (B-)

In Japan, McCann Alpha, a new division, was launched in early 2022 and aimed to serve as a business co-creation partner. McCann Alpha works closely with clients, such as Panasonic, to run projects, from ideation to realisation. ‘Alter Ego’ and ‘Carbon Pay,’ two co-creation projects between McCann Alpha and Panasonic’s Design Centre studio, won a Bronze Award and AdverTimes Award in the creative innovation category at the 2022 ACC Tokyo Creativity Awards.

Craft in China designed and developed Meri (the McCann Entertainment Recommendation Intelligence), a bespoke intelligence tool, to help brands make better decisions about endorsement, working with influencers, and controlling risks in the market. With AI technology and a unique scoring algorithm, Meri assesses influencers and celebrities and analyses brand fit. It also tracks campaign effectiveness, measures ROI, and generates a performance report. McCann began to use it to serve clients. Though it’s quite an amazing innovation tool for the agency, influencer marketing tools and agency brands are springing up like mushrooms in the market over the past few years, so this is largely keeping pace with client needs.

Meanwhile, McCann Worldgroup keeps working with Facebook and Salesforce. IPG’s global acquisition of Salesforce commerce specialist RafterOne in 2022 boosted the agency’s ecommerce tech expertise and enabled it to offer a full suite of ecommerce solutions. We’ll need to monitor its effects on APAC business this year. Largely on the basis of McCann’s new technologies in Japan and China we will upgrade its score to a ‘good’ B-.

DEI & Sustainability (B+)

In 2022, the agency continued to build its Year of Belonging programme under the theme of ‘Connection'. Over 980 colleagues, almost half the workforce, tuned in for a series of conscious inclusion-themed webinars.  

APAC remains the highest-ranked region in a global employee survey on engagement and DEI rankings, scoring 84% compared with a global average of 78% on the fair treatment of employees. With a clear plan to foster a more diverse and inclusive workforce, the region achieved 80%, above the global average of 74%. 

However, the rates of females in permanent staff and females in senior management both dropped from last year and now sit at  44.3% and 33% respectively. The agency leadership attributed the significant drops to the solid female leadership teams of McCann Health and Momentum that were not included in this year’s data.

The agency’s annual DEI event, Day for Meaning across the region, drew 128 groups with 135 moderators, and 1585 participants attended workshops in 2022 across the region. McCann also designed a half-day in-person workshop for the executive management team to participate. It also collaborates with clients for DEI training and workshops of the Mastercard APAC and Nikkei Japan teams.

After building a DEI council for APAC in 2021, the agency also launched the APAC Sustainability Council in 2022, a community of sustainability champions and passionate local leaders in offices across China, India, Japan, the Philippines, and SEA.

On a global scale, McCann Worldgroup advanced its net-zero emissions goal by a decade, from 2040 to 2030. The region achieved an 85% cut in total carbon emissions compared to 2019. Over 500 people in the region have taken a pledge affirming their commitment to the green agenda. All Craft employees in the region have been fully trained in sustainable production in the past year.

According to the agency, no wholly-owned McCann Worldgroup agency in Asia works with oil or gas companies. The agency produced a one-hour documentary called ‘The Truth about a Well World, Lessons from Asia’s Billions’, which presented data and research from its teams in Japan, Indonesia and Singapore. The film showcased stories of creative communities that used creativity and cultural understanding to address issues of well-being and sustainability.

McCann Worldgroup continues to be a leader in the region on DEI and sustainability initiatives in the region and continues to deserve an excellent grade. If the agency was able to raise or balance its level of women in senior leadership, we would have had no problem raising the grade here to an outstanding A-.

Creativity & Effectiveness (B)

Setting creativity, together with client fitness and community as the top three priorities in 2022, the agency earned 175 awards for creativity and effectiveness in total. 

McCann Worldgroup’s campaign Shagun Ka Lifafa for Ujjivan Small Finance Bank in India helped 232,000 women gain more financial equality. The agency redesigned the lifafa (envelopes) to be turned into bank account registration forms embedded with a 1 rupee coin of shagun, a cash gift for weddings, and made the special-designed envelope available at stationery stores and popular talent and wedding shops. Brides could open a bank account with just the envelope and 1 rupee coin attached. The campaign won a creative commerce Gold Lion at Cannes, as well as a Glass Spike and silver and bronze at LIA.  

McCann Worldgroup China made Campaign Asia’s Ad Nut’s 10 Best Ads of 2022 with a campaign for juice brand Innocent, featuring Amy, a real-life person who is repulsed by all fruit. 

The agency created unlimited media and social buzz for Adidas Originals’ unlimited Edition campaign in China. Facing difficulties and even boycotts for western brands, Adidas’ brand favorability doubled and gained 474,000 new grassroots Adidas shoe designer applicants in two months. 

With an increasing number of awards from Cannes Lions to Effie and Spikes Asia compared to 2021, McCann Worldgroup India ranks as the No. 1 most effective agency in APAC, according to the Effie Index. It was a solid creative showing in 2022, so we are upgrading the agency’s creative grade to a ‘very good’ B.

Management (B-)

In 2022 the agency conducted 54,725 hours of training for staff across the region, an increase of over 70% from the previous year. The agency’s annual survey also showed that 88% of APAC employees felt they had the tools and resources to do their job well, surpassing the global average of 79%.

The agency strengthened its creative leadership in China and Japan by promoting Yinbo Ma and Kazz Ishihara to chief creative officers. It also added a regional creative excellence director in Singapore. In addition, the agency launched a consultancy service in China and promoted China’s planning lead Suzzane Zhang to VP of MW Advisory in APAC and head of strategy for China.

But for most of its markets, there are more exits than new hires in the agency. It recorded a higher turnover rate in 2022 than 32% in 2021. Overall, the agency’s leadership team has been more stable over the past two years, but remote supervision by an APAC president is never ideal and remains so for McCann Worldgroup, especially given travel restrictions. 

We like what management is doing around training and fostering DEI and inclusion, but its higher turnover rate and remote oversight remain issues, warranting a ‘good’ but not great score of B-.

McCann (45%) MRM (42%) Craft (13%) Integrated services Data/tech Production Cisco Systems General Motors (GM) L’Oréal SA Mastercard Microsoft Nestlé Reckitt Benckiser Plc  The Coca-Cola Company The agency listed two clients among the top 10 as confidential.  B: We continue to be proud of our long-standing client relationships and innovative way we develop our business to meet industry headwinds, as well as the leadership we show in DE&I and Sustainability.