Inside DDB Sydney's Custom Agency Model for McDonald's

At a time when many agencies are rethinking their models, DDB Sydney's dedicated McDonald's team is planning to welcome back McDonald's Australia and all of the client's agency partners to its office on a weekly basis, beginning in January. Several years ago, DDB Sydney launched what it calls a creative review meeting. Before the pandemic, these meetings took place every Wednesday and Thursday, at two different locations. Every Wednesday, the McDonalds team co-located at the DDB Sydney office. Every Thursday, McDonalds co-located with DDB's sister agency, OMD. DDB Sydney's account model for McDonald's is unusual, even as the industry is altering traditional account structures and creating bespoke agency teams for their clients. The McDonald's account is a hybrid version of the standard co-location model, where an agency team typically sits full-time at the client's office. DDB Sydney and McDonald's sit at agency offices and co-locate for only some of the week alongside agencies from other holding companies. The model stands out even within DDB Sydney as one of two accounts structured in this way. DDB Sydney is behind well-known McDonald's creative campaigns in Australia. The group created the Mother's Day spot "Cravings," and the integrated campaign "50 Years of Maccas." Recently, McDonalds Australia consolidated more of its business with DDB Sydney. Last year it awarded the agency its social media business, which WPP's VMLY&R Sydney used to manage. A new model of co-location Lisa Hauptmann, managing partner at DDB for the McDonald's account, says that weekly co-location at DDB began when the agency and client decided they needed more face-to-face time, but the McDonald's office location was far out, making it difficult for the agency employees to commute. "We are an industry that is based around communication and creativity, so it is so important to be able to have that face-to-face," she said. In 2019 Hauptmann became the managing partner on DDB Sydney's dedicated McDonalds account. When the group was still meeting in the office, the entire McDonald's team—from the CMO, down—would come to the DDB Sydney office and to the OMD office, Hauptmann says. "You get immediate feedback on things. You get to present singularity from top to more junior people," she said. DDB Group Australia is made up of several other agencies, including PR agency Mango Communications and digital agency Tribal Worldwide, which are located in the same office space as DDB Sydney and also work on the McDonald's account. Before the pandemic, several agencies joined the DDB Group agencies at the DDB Sydney office every Wednesday—even agencies outside of Omnicom's agency umbrella, like Publicis Groupe's Digitas, and independent agency Guihen Jones. To plan for the weekly in-person meetings, the DDB team would distribute an agenda to McDonald's and its roster of agencies. "We really do pride ourselves on having a great agency village relationship," Hauptmann said. At the beginning of the pandemic, DDB Sydney employees began working remotely, along with the rest of the industry. The agency decided to maintain meetings with McDonald's every Wednesday and Thursday, but now it hold the meetings virtually and commits to sending an agenda out on a weekly basis to retain the process it followed for in-person meetings. Returning to in-person meetings The team is still remote, but the DDB Sydney office will re-open in January, and Hauptmann is eager for the McDonald's team to return to co-locate with DDB. McDonald's will need to comply with DDB policies and be fully vaccinated. McDonald's return-to-office protocols will be similar to DDB's, according to Hauptmann, making it easier for the two to resume co-location once the DDB office officially reopens. Hauptmann believes employees will be encouraged to come into the office on certain days, and says she will encourage the McDonald's dedicated team to return to the office on Wednesdays to attend in-person meetings once they are reinstated. "We've created it bespoke for us, but it works incredibly well," Hauptmann said of the model. The McDonald's model was so successful that DDB Sydney expanded it for its Volkswagen account; it now co-locates with the agency on Tuesdays. "Volkswagen saw the McDonald's team in the DDB building and said 'wow, we want to mimic that model,'" said Hauptmann. How Remote Work May Forever Change the Co-Located Agency Model