Not all fun and games at OMD

Uncertain clients hit by Covid definitely wanted to tap the Omnicom media agency’s brand promise of ‘Better Decisions, Faster'. To help enable that, OMD’s APAC chief Stephen Li was fortunate to be able to draw on bench strength from the likes of CSO Gavin Gibson who helped roll out a new consumer intelligence dashboard for clients and COO Rochelle Chhaya, who helped clients track data on rising digital spends in a privacy-compliant way.  New market chiefs like Malaysia managing director Anisha Iyer grew profitability and agency size while Connie Chan was lured from WPP to take over as China CEO.

It was in China where OMD faced up to the harsh reality of a broken relationship with McDonald’s and parted ways, necessitating a string of new wins including Lindt & Sprugli, Daimler and The Natural Diamond Council to make up for the bulk of the McDonald’s loss.

The agency was hit by job losses hardest in China, making its past outstanding score for people and diversity difficult to sustain, while creatively it was not OMD's strongest year. But given some of its new efficiencies and tools, OMD could be set to bounce back more strongly next year.

So where did OMD ultimately land in our grading?

Our full Agency Report Card on OMD—with the overall grade plus a detailed analysis and scores for management; innovation; clients and business; creativity; and people and diversity—is available only to Campaign Asia-Pacific members.

Become a member to get access to all 39 of the 2020 Agency Report Cards, plus many additional benefits.