Wavemaker Is Adweek’s US Media Agency of the Year 2021

There are a lot of words that can be used to describe 2020. For Nancy Tortorella, Wavemaker’s U.S. chief client officer, one, in particular, comes to mind: "whiplash." “We went from clients wanting to very quickly pull back on dollars to wanting to reinvest and then wanting to be smart about understanding trends, media consumption and consumer behavior,” Tortorella says. The frenzy came just as Wavemaker unveiled a new visual identity and "Positive provocation" rebrand. The rollout was March 12, just days before New York, home of the agency’s U.S. headquarters, went into lockdown. The repositioning included practical changes, like a new operating system, but it also served as the basis for a new mindset at the agency, one that encouraged employees to challenge clients and old ways of thinking. “We were in some ways so lucky that we launched it right before the pandemic,” says Amanda Richman, Wavemaker’s U.S. CEO. For Richman, the rebrand gave the agency a rallying cry to help it navigate the many challenges that came to define 2020. And it appears to have worked. In addition to growing its net revenue by 4.6%, Wavemaker managed to avoid layoffs, hire 200 people and promote 100 employees in 2020. It did this while winning several new clients, including Novo Nordisk and Pernod Ricard, and retaining all of its existing clients. According to Tortorella, response rates and scores from Wavemaker's annual client satisfaction survey in 2020 were “higher than they have ever been." On top of it all, the agency rewrote its DEI playbook to address systemic racism in the industry, a process that involved making a formal commitment to ensure at least half of all entry-level hires in the U.S. are Black or Latinx. Kristen Metzger, the agency’s chief people officer for North America, says Wavemaker achieved that goal last year and plans to continue doing so. For all of these reasons, Wavemaker, which WPP formed three years ago when it merged Maxus and MEC, is Adweek’s U.S. Media Agency of the Year. “Wavemaker's biggest strength is thinking big while consistently putting in the hard work to achieve those goals,” says Mike Lorenzen, DoorDash's senior director of consumer marketing strategy and planning. “We treat them as an extension of our growth team, and they take that responsibility head-on.” Key wins: DoorDash (retained following 2019 review), Novo Nordisk, Pernod Ricard, Perfetti Van Melle, Bungie, Ecolab. Losses: None. Strategic moves: Dennis Potgraven named U.S. chief strategy officer; Kacie McKee promoted to U.S. ecommerce lead; Wendy Mayer elevated to chief financial officer of North America. U.S. revenue: +4.6% YOY (Source: Wavemaker); $350 million (R3). Embracing change Like most agencies, Wavemaker had to act fast when Covid-19 took hold in the U.S. Thanks to its range of capabilities, which encompass everything from ecommerce to data science, the agency helped clients adapt in a variety of ways. For instance, Wavemaker faced the daunting challenge of helping the U.S. government educate the population about the importance of completing the 2020 census. Limitations on in-person canvassing and the politicized nature of the census in 2020—former President Donald Trump ended the count early, for instance, a move critics said would lead to an undercount of minorities—made the endeavor more difficult. Additionally, some traditional forms of advertising, like out-of-home placements, no longer made sense in light of the pandemic. Wavemaker adapted the campaign’s paid media plan to account for the new reality. To leverage the increase in pizza deliveries across the country, for example, the agency started placing census ads on pizza boxes in key markets where response rates needed a boost. It also shifted out-of-home spend to grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations and other locations it knew people would still be visiting in spite of the circumstances. According to the agency, the campaign ultimately ended up running 1,000 different ads—in English and 43 other languages—with more than 9,600 media partners over 10 months. The agency also helped DoorDash debut “Open for Delivery,” an impromptu campaign that asked consumers to order from local restaurants when indoor dining shut down in March. (The Martin Agency, Adweek's 2020 U.S. Agency of the Year, also collaborated with DoorDash on the marketing push.) Within a week, Wavemaker had the campaign up and running, adjusting it in real time in response to consumer sentiment. According to Edison Trends, DoorDash’s U.S. market share grew in the months following the campaign’s rollout. “With their support, we were quickly able to launch this campaign in some of the most viewed and high-profile programmings, bringing much needed visibility and support of how consumers could support restaurants throughout the pandemic,” Lorenzen says. Wavemaker started formally building out its ecommerce practice in 2019, a decision that paid off last year. In October, eMarketer said it expected U.S. ecommerce sales to grow 32.4% in 2020 compared to the previous year. Wavemaker capitalized on the surge by helping clients, particularly those with a brick-and-mortar presence, improve their ecommerce strategies. When Covid-19 hit, Wavemaker worked with Bausch + Lomb’s head of commerce to drive new growth streams for its portfolio of brands. The agency customized ecommerce strategies for its eye care and vitamin brands across retail sites and aggregators, such as Instacart, to capitalize on consumer behaviors. In addition to Bausch + Lomb, companies including Church & Dwight and L’Oréal expanded their relationships with the agency to ramp up their ecommerce capabilities last year. “Many of our packaged-goods clients who had begun to delve into ecommerce really had to turn that dial up, as consumers were not going to traditional big-box stores or supermarkets to shop,” Tortorella says. “We were poised to immediately pivot to address those needs.” The agency says its ecommerce practice grew by 200% last year as a result of these efforts. Wavemaker also grew because of its new business wins. In October, Pernod Ricard, which owns liquor brands including Absolut and Jameson, named Wavemaker as its U.S. media agency of record. “We’re going through a pretty massive transformation of marketing, and we needed a media agency that could take us into that future,” says Pam Forbus, svp and chief marketing officer at Pernod Ricard North America. “We knew about their capabilities, and we knew exactly what we wanted. It was just a matter of ensuring we got the right talent on our team.” Forbus says the agency has been tasked with helping Pernod Ricard rethink how it targets consumers and leading it into a “cookieless world.” Even though the partnership is in its early days, she says she’s impressed so far. “Their data-science chops are second to none,” Forbus says. “I’m very confident we’re going to have huge success coming out of this.” Talking it out Faced with the anxieties and roadblocks of 2020, Wavemaker doubled down on transparency to ensure employees were in the know about everything from how it’s tackling financial challenges to the agency’s DEI action plans. “There’s a ton of transparency that our people demand of us but that we’re happy to provide,” Metzger says. That transparency takes many forms, one of which is ShopTalk, a weekly town hall led by Richman that started after the onset of Covid-19. Through ShopTalk, Wavemaker has kept employees informed of its DEI progress and strategy. Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last May, the agency revised its DEI commitments. “If you don’t start to bring people into the industry, then we’re not going to see more diversity at the top,” Metzger says. “We have to bring them in early and help them grow.” Melanin, the agency's Black and Latinx employee resource group, helped Wavemaker establish a mentorship program last year called StepUp, which pairs mid-level employees with agency leaders. According to Wavemaker, it was the first WPP agency to share its workforce diversity data. Its latest figures reveal that 31% of its leadership team, and 38% of its workforce, are not white. In addition to its DEI efforts, Metzger says, the agency has doubled down on “performance management” throughout the past year, assisting employees with their career ambitions. “We’ve always been really focused on growth, but we’re especially focused on people’s growth and development,” she says, adding that Wavemaker is also in the process of creating a platform that she says will help staffers “understand where they stand in their career journey and what they can do to get to the next level.” As CEO, Richman spent much of the past year making sure clients felt supported, too. Roughly a month into remote working, each team sent a video to the client they work on to thank them. “Because we hadn't seen each other for that one-month window, it really resonated, people missing each other's faces,” she says. “The responses we got from the clients were so overwhelming.” Through the ups and downs of 2020, Richman has found that embracing optimism, vulnerability and a little humility went a long way. “We don’t always have the answers. This is all new ground that we’re traveling, but we will be transparent in telling you what we know and what we don’t know,” Richman says. “We’re going to make mistakes. It’s OK. Come back at it the next day and don’t dwell on what happened yesterday.” Key campaigns L’Oréal, “Women of Worth” Last year, Wavemaker helped L’Oréal turn its annual Women of Worth event into an NBC special. The event, typically held at The Pierre hotel in New York, honors 10 inspirational women making a difference in the world. The one-hour special debuted nationally on ABC the night before Thanksgiving. “The event transitioned into a national broadcast platform that embodied the spirit of the powerful event while allowing us to share the inspiring stories of these remarkable women with the nation and a broader audience,” says Shenan Reed, head of media at L’Oréal U.S. Ikea, “Save Our Sleep” Early last year, Wavemaker helped position Ikea as a go-to destination for all things sleep. Using the hashtag #SaveOurSleep, Ikea asked people to share what prevents them from getting a good night’s rest. Influencer couple Sam Tsui and Casey Breves then responded to some of the posts with customized lullabies, each of which creatively explained how Ikea could solve their sleep problems. In addition to the social campaign, Ikea delivered “sleep kits” to people in two of its biggest markets, New York and Los Angeles. DoorDash, official partner of the NBA Last year, DoorDash became the official on-demand delivery platform of the NBA, WNBA and NBA 2K League, its esports venture. Mike Lorenzen, DoorDash's senior director of consumer marketing strategy and planning, says Wavemaker played an “instrumental” role in pulling off the partnership, which coincided with the start of the NBA playoffs. As part of the partnership, DoorDash created the #PlayItForward Challenge, a social media campaign designed to encourage fans to support Black-owned restaurants. Check out our full coverage: Global Media Agency of the Year MediaCom Helped Clients See the Bigger Picture During CrisisBreakthrough Media Agency of the Year PMG Weathered the Pandemic by Prioritizing People

Media Agency of the Year

A New Rallying Cry Set the Perfect Tone for US Media Agency of the Year Wavemaker in 2020

Adaptability, varied offerings and 'positive provocation' resonated with clients old and new

Minda Smiley

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