CAREERS: McCann shakes up for creative boost

Over the past year, McCann-Erickson Guangming's creative department

has undergone a radical transformation that has sharpened the agency's

overall competitiveness. The strategy for improvement lay in a

collection of simple solutions: find the right people; help them grow

through training and career path development; and encourage them to be

an active part of the company.

The revamping of the unit was part of a company-wide process to raise

the professional bar, which was started almost two years ago by McCann

Hong Kong managing director Rosanna Yu.

The creative department was given a big shake out a year ago, when Geoff

Naus was appointed executive creative director, after four years in the

McCann unit that works on Cathay Pacific.

He was faced with a department generally known to be a "sweatshop" and

which had not won any major awards in the two years before he

joined.

"Everyone knew it was a sweatshop and turning it around would not be

easy, so I first wanted to see some signs that management was serious

about making a change for the better.

"It demonstrated its sincerity by resigning two accounts, which allowed

us more time to put more quality into other accounts," said Naus, who

spent eight years with McCann New York before coming out to Asia.

Naus said the principle of empowering people was simple but was so

underutilised because senior people were afraid of losing power. But he

stressed that allowing people the freedom to perform tasks generates

greater creativity.

"You have to treat people as adults and give them responsibilities. It's

amazing what they can achieve compared with working in a

rigidly-controlled department. But the important point to remember is

that the head is a leader and a coach and his job is to get

results."

And the results seem to be rolling in for McCann. The agency is starting

to win awards again for the first time in about three years. In fact, it

has won four in the last six months including a New York Festivals

bronze for a Dairy Farm drinking yogurt campaign, and a prize for a

Mastercard television commercial at the Midsummer Festival in the

UK.

Naus claims that this new empowerment also helped the agency win five of

its last six pitches. Change in the creative department is pushing

through changes across the agency. "We want people to be part of the

company." However, he admits that most of the creative people from a

year ago have quit because they didn't agree with the changes. "For many

people, change is a hard thing to deal with but we gave people a lot of

leeway. In the end, people left of their own choosing."