Its awards cupboard remains depressingly bare, and — on the radars of the world’s hotshot art directors and writers —it is unlikely to even register.
Which makes Joe McDonagh’s task a pretty tricky one. As worldwide executive director of Cheil, based in Seoul, McDonagh is on a mission to raise the Korean agency’s creative profile, in tandem with its much touted bid of being a top 10 ad agency by 2010.
Since his appointment three years ago, progress has been muted. While the American comes with impressive credentials that include stints at Ogilvy, Saatchi & Saatchi and Dentsu — Cheil has yet to make major ripples, either in terms of its creative output or hires.
Perhaps, though, this is all part of McDonagh’s masterplan. Cheil, as he points out, is an agency that is aiming for a fairly dramatic transition, from Samsung’s marketing arm to a bona fide creative consultancy. There are some severe growing pains to contend with, which automatically limit its appeal to the usual creative birds of passage. But as McDonagh says: “You don’t make a difference without upsetting the balance a bit.”
What McDonagh has done, with a reasonable degree of success, is stock his team with some respected middleweights, such as fellow American Guy Harrison, and former Fallon Singapore creative Jinho Kim. But not everyone is convinced. One agency source, who has worked with Cheil, points out that the agency’s “basic preoccupation is growth”. “I don’t see any visible signs of opportunities to do different work for different clients,” says the source.
A popular Korean anecdote makes play on the fact that Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee’s house is situated directly opposite the Cheil building — why the lights never turn off at HQ.
Apocryphal or not, Samsung’s presence remains a double-edged sword as far as Cheil’s creative aspirations go; while it is an undeniable drawcard for a lot of creatives, there is a common argument that its own creative mindset automatically limits Cheil’s. Erik Van Vulpen, who spent two years as Cheil’s Southeast Asia regional director in Singapore, agrees but says, “Samsung is slowly getting more world-league. Also, the Samsung culture is to ask for more ‘creative’ stuff, even if how it is defined could use a little bit of help.”
One thing Cheil clearly is not short of, though, is cash. The agency currently ranks as the 16th largest globally, and made Forbes Asia’s 2006 ‘200 Best under a billion’ list. Whether that translates into investment in creativity is unclear. Korean agencies, generally, aren’t renowned for paying top-dollar and McDonagh is coy about how much Cheil spends on creative.
Still, shaking off an uninspiring creative heritage is likely to prove Cheil’s biggest challenge yet. Since the turn of the millennium, the agency has rapidly expanded its overseas presence from 12 to 31 offices, and 2005 marked the first year when over half of its billings originated overseas, even if it had to lay off 50 people in New York.
Almost imperceptibly, the agency already appears to have built an overseas network that looks in better health than either of its more illustrious Japanese peers.
But true success, argue observers, can only arrive when it sheds the Samsung tag and starts to earn a decent crust from a range of clients.
