Interview with Adam Mack — Chief Strategy Officer for the EMEA region at Weber Shandwick
Adam Mack is Chief Strategy Officer for the EMEA region at Weber Shandwick. In this Movidiam podcast, Adam speaks to Movidiam’s Marketing Director Paul about his work in PR, changing video production landscapes and the role of agencies in these, and the centrality of high-quality video in making a campaign a success.
Adam Mack, good morning and welcome to the Movidiam Podcast. If I could just ask you to introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit about your role and what you do at Weber Shandwick that would be great.
Good morning Paul, good morning everyone. So my role, my title at Weber Shandwick is Chief Strategy Officer for EMEA.
Sounds grand, but we are a relatively small team, supporting all our clients across the EMEA region with strategic thinking. Whether they’re a client who needs some deeper audience insight, need some measure of more complex analytics or help on the brand development side, we help clients do that in terms of channel and content planning. So we operate at the front end of the process and we support all our clients across the region, or at least those who require deeper strategic thinking; whether they’re in the healthcare sector, the consumer sector, or the technology sector. That’s the broad role of myself and my team.
Fantastic, and I’d like now to talk a little bit about your own personal experience of designing and recommending and using video in campaigns as part of a strategic approach with clients. Tell me a little bit about that.
Myself and my team, we’re involved obviously in the conception of the creative concept, as opposed to the production of the video. We start at the beginning in terms of understanding who the audience is for a particular campaign, what the category trends are, what the cultural broad cultural insights are, what the company story is, what the brand story is and so on.
So we’re involved in the conception of it. Then ultimately, our role is to find an insight that is going to make the content spark engagement with the right audience. We work then very closely with our Creative Director and his team. We’re the guys who come up with the bigger ideas to develop a creative concept, and then that concept is then taken into our studio.
Our creative team works very closely with our studio. We have an increasingly growing studio, with animators, videographers, technologists, etc. Our concept goes into the studio, and the studio then develops content to bring that to life. Now more often than not, that’s video content. It can be other ideas and other thoughts, but video is very much at the center.
Fascinating. I guess the world of communications, of digital video online, has evolved massively since you and I met when we worked at Porter Novelli many, many moons ago. Tell me a little bit about how you’ve seen that evolve, and how actually today, more than ever, you may disagree, the digital and video obviously fit front and center into the comms strategy of a lot of brands. Obviously not every brand, but give me a sense of how you have seen that over the last ten years?
Sure, it’s evolved dramatically over the last ten years. I would say that when we joined the industry, the focus was very much on media relations and putting together a press release. I think PR agencies today are much, much broader than that. The content we produce is not purely for the intention of media influencers, it’s for public consumption. As an agency, we tend to think about ourselves as a marketing services agency with a bit of a PR heart.
So obviously our heritage and our expertise and the way we think about marketing are born out of PR. But increasingly, we develop videos, we develop websites, we develop all manner of different ways in which to engage the audience. We go much further than, I think the industry goes much, much further than developing press releases, and so on.
I think specifically to video, we have as an industry come to that relatively late. There are agencies out there that are very used to making films and videos, ad agencies in particular. I’d say we’ve properly come to it in the last five years or so. The difference between when we started doing it, say five years ago, and what we’re doing now, is the quality of the content we’re producing. The video producing has just improved exponentially. Likewise, the speed at which we’re able to produce that content has dramatically increased.
Recently, we did a global project which took us from client sign off to campaign ready in about six weeks to two months, which was unheard of five years ago. We’re just able to produce better quality faster. I’m imagining that’s going to be similar for other agencies in our industry and agencies outside the PR industry.
The other broad point I think, is that, and I think most people listening to this podcast will know this, is that the different kinds of agencies, the different disciplines, are getting closer together in terms of the services and the things that they provide, and things that they offer clients. We talk about them slightly differently, but the expertise is getting closer. The lines are blurring.
Yes, I think you mentioned earlier that the agencies of certain sizes are building their own capabilities. You talked about Weber Shandwick’s own studio, how unique do you think that is today?
I think five years ago, that would have been very unique for a comms agency. How unique do you think it is today for an agency to have its own video production and digital capabilities in-house?
Amongst the bigger PR agencies, I suspect that’s not unique. In the industry, I suspect that is unique. We’re lucky we’re a big agency with global scale. We can incubate ideas in the States and then pull them into Europe. In the bigger agency sector, I think that’s not necessarily unique. But in our industry, I think it’s relatively unique.
We started off the studio function with a team of freelancers, and it’s become rapidly clear to us that it’s something that we need to have in-house, in-agency. Something that we’re able to provide as part of the offer, as opposed to something that’ stacked on to the strategy and creative process that we’ve been doing for probably longer than creating the content itself.
So it is a seamless, from planning all the way through to creation, that actually you can fulfill that very, very easily by having the resource in-house.
The quality of the content is enhanced by being able to have conversations between strategists and creatives and content producers and technologists by having them all in the room at the same time. It’s invaluable, really to us in the way that we are developing as a business.
Is there ever a conflict with in-house studios not being able to say no sometimes? I read with interest in the Drum — there’s sometimes not the objectivity you get if you buy services in. If it’s built in-house, everyone tends to nod in general agreement. Have you come across that?
I think probably in the early days. Well, the early days, probably five years ago, that might well have been the case. We don’t do this religiously with every brief, but now we try to bring in the studio representative right at the start of the process, along with the strategist and the creative. Our creative team and creative conceptual guides have quite good production expertise. As we bring them more into the front of the process, at the start of the process that happens much less because they’ve been involved in it, and they’ve been able to input their own thinking and make their own challenges as the brief and the concept has developed.
Yes, there’s greater cohesion. I guess this brings us on to talk a little bit about your clients and their appetite.
Digital and video are not for everyone, albeit they have a broad appeal. Tell me about how you approach clients and their involvement. Is there an expectation from your clients that you have these capabilities? Is there ever a conflict in that sometimes they have their own capabilities? How do you manage it with clients?
It’s predictable to say this, but every client’s different obviously. I think we’re in a period of transition, moving away from when clients didn’t know that we offered this kind of service and quality of video and content production, to a place where they know we provide it and they expect it of us. From the perspective of myself and my team, I can’t really remember the last campaign that I worked on that didn’t have video as a central piece of the campaign.
I’m going to give some examples here. We did some work for UNICEF last year around an emergency lessons concept, which had video right at the heart. We made lots of video for that. We did some Mannequin Challenge sort of responsive created for Virgin Atlantic. We did some work for ActionAid, all of those had video at the heart.
I think clients recognize that video can be an anthemic crescendo for any campaign that we do. I can’t remember who came up with this concept, but ‘hero, hub, and hygiene’? The hero content, the video, the center of the campaign is critical, and I think clients recognize that. It’s the thing that gets people talking. I think clients recognize it can make or break any campaign we do. The video content is critical.
Obviously, I think the other part of digital and video is the distribution. What’s your experience? I guess again, you talked about the early days of when we entered the industry, it was about column inches, it was about print, it was about editorial. Distribution has exploded and some say too much.
What’s your experience as an agency with the clients that you work with about the number, the breadth, the depth of the channels that you are expected to have insight into or expected to be able to advise a client on — how has that changed?
I think there’s obviously been an explosion of platforms and channels that we need to manage. My team specifically, in terms of understanding, and our social media digital team obviously in understanding the breadth of digital and online platforms through which we need to put content.
That’s becoming more and more important, and more and more of an intense process. We’ve recently brought someone on board globally from IPG Mediabrands to help us better model how campaigns can reach clients. I don’t know beyond us whether others are looking at this, but I think as an agency, we’re increasingly starting to bring in media-planning and content-planning talent to help us with that.
I think traditionally, we were working closely with media influencers to get content talked about and distributed. I think that’s easily translated to online, where we’re developing increasing specialism in dealing with bloggers, online influencers, and so on. We’re working closely with them to not just distribute, but also to be part of developing the content that we develop for our clients. I’m starting to use the word partner cast a little bit. Brands always used to broadcast content, but actually now we increasingly co-create content with influencers. I think influencers are a really important part of that.
Finally, we can’t just rely on organic searched and so on for people to discover our content. So increasingly again, we are paying to increase social reach. Paid is becoming something from a social perspective that we use quite frequently.
I’ve seen a project recently where if you’d have just relied on organic reach by paying, by investing a small sum in paid social, we increase reach by about seven times. We haven’t used paid on account on that campaign, and we had a fairly impressive influencer involved helping us with it. Even with him, the pays sort of increase sevenfold the reach of the campaigns. So, I guess influencers being important and paid being increasingly important to us as an industry. That’s how we’re looking at distribution, I guess.
Amazing. I mean, these are conversations that you and I could probably never have imagined having north of five years ago.
It’s so broad. Where do you feel the sands will settle, if you like, between advertising, between marketing, and between what probably would have been called a PR agency? How do you see the division of labor and the division of roles and responsibilities playing out over the next three to five years?
That’s tricky, isn’t it? I’ve called everything wrong in 2016. I’m a bit biased in terms of being from a PR background, but I do think that PR should, and is best at managing influencers and influencer marketing. So I think, I hope, that marketers will increasingly look to their kind of communications agencies to manage the influencer relationships in the same way as they manage media relationships, and continue to manage media relationships.
Something that we can hope to increase is our sophistication, as well in terms of influencer mapping and so on. In terms of the content development, ad agencies have been creating amazing content for 20, 30 years. They’re not suddenly going to be bad at creating content. I think we’re increasing in our sophistication; developing video and film. We find ourselves in pitches, and have been in pitch situations where we’re pitching against above the line agencies increasingly. Some we win, some we lose. Hopefully, we’ll start to win a few more in the next three or four years, and we’ll become a really good producer of video.
We’re creating some really good content at the moment, but I think the sophistication and the quality is only going to increase as we bring in increasingly great talent. That’s one thing actually that has improved obviously, our ability to deliver. It’s just the openness of creating the strategic talent to come into the PR industry, and help us develop our capabilities so I don’t see a dramatic change. I think we will increasingly, and win in great video content over the next three to five years. But it’s not going to suddenly transform from us being a lead agency on everything, and ad agencies falling by the wayside. I think it’s gonna be much more grade in that, in next three to five years.
Yeah, I’d definitely agree with some of that, I think the other piece, which I’d like to get your perspective on, is the kind of upskilling that we’ve seen on the client side I think without question, the knowledge, the expertise, the understanding of how agencies operate. Brand owners and clients have become much more sophisticated, that sounds slightly condescending, it’s not meant to.
But clients are building their own capabilities. Unilever has talked about building content, or has built a content studio. You’ve got hybrid models like the Oliver Agency, putting agency skills inside brands. Is there a threat there for Weber Shandwick and your clients in terms of clients actually taking more and some of the skills and capabilities that perhaps once they would have put out to an agency?
That’s a really good point. At Cannes this year one of the things I picked up on at the tail end of the festival when the entertainment festival started was this whole idea of disintermediation. So, in-house brands communicating more directly with entertainment providers to create content.
That presents a threat to us, because obviously if a brand goes direct to say, HBO to create a piece of content, what’s their need for an agency? I’m being a bit brutal there, but there is a disintermediation in terms of the content.
There is also disintermediation in terms of the channel, so brands going directly to the likes of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram rather than going through an agency. Now, I don’t think that means that agencies don’t have a role because I think there is a third party nesting to what an agency does.
In terms of the channels, if you’re a brand and you go direct to Facebook, you’re ignoring all the other channels. Agencies will always have a role to play in helping clients get a more 360, holistic view of a campaign. So there’s a threat for sure, I think there’s a threat, but I I think agencies will continue to have a role to play as brands communicate more directly with entertainment providers and build up their own capabilities in-house
.
Obviously, one of the things an agency will always be able to offer that in-house may struggle to develop is the creativity and the objectivity to develop unusual, different kinds of campaigns. I think creativity and strategic input are two things that agencies will always be called upon to give clients in terms of the production and so on. It’s not my specific area, so I’m not sure how much in-house departments are building in their own production capabilities.
Creativity, I think, seems to be the kind of kernel that remains strong and true from agencies. That around us we’ve got distribution that has really sped up, there’s the ability to communicate more directly with end consumers. But the kernel of creativity sitting at the center of campaigns is the piece that’s going to really be of the greatest value to a brand coming to an agency. Would you agree with that?
100% agree with that. I think they’re going to be coming to agencies for big thinking and bold concepts.
That’s where agencies offer value most. Certainly, we are recognizing that in the quality of the creatives that we’re bringing into our kind of creative department here. We’re bringing people in from advertising, from filmmaking, from all manner of different disciplines. You would not have dreamt about having those kinds of people in a PR agency even five years ago, I would suggest.
So yes, creative, great creative concepts, and big ideas. I think our role is going to be something that people come to agencies for, and I think it’s not always the ad agency that comes up with those ideas. Although as I said earlier, there’s not gonna be a dramatic change in that but I think digital agencies, PR agencies, influencer agencies, they’re all going to be coming up with big ideas.
Are the consulting firms and their march into creative landscapes a bigger threat to PR agencies and to ad agencies? For example, Accenture acquired Karmarama last year. Are they more of a threat to PR communications agencies than pure advertising agencies?
They’re certainly a threat. They’re certainly acquisitive at the moment, buying in PR, comms and creative agencies. I guess the question is how well they can assimilate those capabilities in a model that’s very different to creative agencies’. So it will be interesting to see how they develop their offers. Traditionally, they have these very big legacy models and legacy ways of working that they have built into those big consultants.
It’s going to be interesting to see how they adapt to being more creative, how they bring in the marketing agency expertise that they are buying up.I think that will hinge on integration process and how they do that, but there’s certainly a threat. We’re obviously giving clients more strategic counsel.
That is absolutely a threat from that side of things, in terms of our drive to have the ear of the CEO in a business. That’s certainly an area where there’s a threat from those kinds of agencies. But in terms of to our entire industry, I’d just be interested to see how they assimilate the talent that they’re bringing in.
Yeah, I think it’s a really good point. Drawing to a close, I want to bring it back to content and put you on the spot about perhaps your favorite campaigns, some of your favorite video content or programs that you saw last year. They can be your own, I’m not averse to that. Anything that really stood out to you last year?
I’m going to choose one of ours, because it’s winning awards, and it’s something that we’re very proud of. The Parallel Barking campaign that we’ve done for Vauxhall has been a huge success, getting a dog to park a car on Wimbledon High Street and filming people’s reactions. It’s a very, very simple piece of content, but it’s important for us because it’s something that sort of transcends PR. It’s where we created a piece of content that’s driven media interests.
It’s sounds like a health and safety nightmare full of small print. Is it not?
How isn’t it? I love that one and I love the emergency lessons work. Taking a broader view, I just love the Ikea ‘bookbook’ piece of content, I thought that was a bit of genius. And we still can’t forget Alzheimer’s, we’re mutual friends with the person who helped develop the ‘Santa Forgot’ Christmas video for Alzheimer’s Research UK, which I thought was just a beautifully emotional piece of content. But that works online, that works on TV, that works everywhere.
So three different kind of things there. Bookbook, there’s a bit of humor in it. We all like someone having a dig at Apple nowadays. So, those three.There are plenty of other great pieces of work, but those are the three that spring to mind.
Wonderful, Adam. That’s been really, really insightful. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for being part of Movidiam’s podcast.
Lovely talking to you Paul. Thanks very much for asking me, I enjoyed it.
Find Adam Mack and Weber Shandwick online here:
Website: http://webershandwick.co.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ws_london
