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."
