When Jeff Cressall left Sydney for Singapore to take on the task of reviving the fortunes of Universal McCann Asia-Pacific three months ago, industry wags were left wondering whether the promotion and the payrise were worth his trouble.
Why leave a business doing wonderfully well to run one that, quite frankly, is not?
In his five years at Universal McCann Australia, Cressall helped build the company into what is probably one of the best media agencies in the world. It is a sizeable company (160 people) which makes a lot of money (it has a revenue base of US$20 million). It has a solid reputation and is the only agency to have won the media Grand Prix at Cannes twice.
Downunder has proved a bright spot in an underperforming network. Cressall is all too aware that in other markets life hasn’t been all beaches and barbecues. The Australian inherits an operation that has experienced dizzying highs and lows in recent years. Fitting fortunes, perhaps, for a business that has been run for the 16 months prior to Cressall’s arrival by a man his detractors accuse of MBA (Management By Altitude).
Harsh, probably, on David Morgan, who moved back to London to a role as global chief client officer in February. But there is a sense that Universal, for all its undoubted potential, needs a steadier hand to run Asia. Last year was characterised by winning Coca-Cola one week, and losing Johnson & Johnson the next. Cressall’s brief will be to reproduce the success he has enjoyed back home, but consistently across a region immeasurably bigger and more complicated.
This task falls to an uncomplicated person. Cressall is the sort of straight-forward businessman one might expect to be leading a network like Universal McCann. He is open, direct - but not aggressively so - and is strangely unimposing for a man six foot three inches tall. A colleague notes: “Jeff is a measured, quiet sort of bloke. Not your typical Australian.”
Cressall insists that he does not harbour plans to “Australianise” his new beat. Beer and pizza in the office on Fridays may rally the troops back home, but in other parts of the region he’ll need to take a different tack.
What he does want to replicate are the results he’s used to. “In Australia, we are highly regarded and highly profitable. We grew the business by 50 per cent over the past two years, which is far better than the region as a whole. Some of our other offices are a 10th of the size. I don’t want to work for a company which does not make good money. We have some very talented people in place, but some of us are going to have to step up a level.”
Cressall, it is obvious, is a ‘doer’. What he wants is substance. He is conscious (as are his competitors) that Universal McCann is a goldmine waiting to be exploited. It has a solid client-base, an extensive network (geographically, if not in billings - it is Recma-ranked fifth in Asia) and, although independent on paper, has a ready-made new-business funnel thanks to close relative McCann Erickson.
To keep a closer eye on the numbers, Cressall has installed “commercial partners” to work alongside the MDs in each market to ensure UM’s business strategy is grounded by good financial sense. And where possible, UM will share resources with IPG cousin Initiative. Sharing research alone saves the network $30 million a year.
Beyond solid book-keeping, Cressall wants to give real meaning to Universal’s positioning statement, ‘Next Thing Now’. “It’s an interesting platform,” he says. “We need to embrace it, endorse it, and make the thing work.”
To do this, he plans to leverage the agency’s two trump cards: strategy and digital. It may come as a surprise that UM has a 66-people strong digital unit, a similarly sized analytics team and spends 12 per cent of its revenue on research. “These are things we have to start shouting about,” says Cressall.
Digital Lab, Universal’s digital intelligence unit in Los Angeles, he wants to bring to Asia. He will also act as a “facilitator” for the network’s stars, such as the Hong Kong MD, Alice Lam, (“a brilliant operator”), and Natalie Pidgeon, strategy director at UM Australia, whom he wants to deploy on a more regional level.
Save a few gaps in the management team, such as a strong regional head of client services, Cressall says that the magic that saw UM Australia retain Unilever against the odds in 2005 is not impossible to regionalise.
In a sense, the pressure is off. The three out of 10 this magazine awarded UM for its performance in 2007 (Media, 6 March) shouldn’t be hard to improve on, even after the painful Intel loss last month. “Getting a three is just not bloody good enough,” says Cressall. “We are strong in Australia, the Philippines and Japan. We need to be elsewhere.
“I’m here to make that happen. I have an action plan up my sleeve. Now let’s see where it takes us.”
Jeff Cressall’s CV
2008 President, Asia-Pacific, chairman, Australia, Universal McCann
2003 Client services director to CEO, Universal McCann Australia
1997 Self employed, property development
1992 General manager, BRW Group
1991 Manager, NewsNet,
1980 Media director to MD, DMB&B
1978 Deputy media director, George Patterson
