The Curious Story of Universal McCann

In his first five months on the job, Universal McCann Worldwide CEO Matt Seiler has put his stamp on the Interpublic media shop, restructuring the U.S. operation, solidifying his senior global management team and instituting a new global brand position.Mary Gerzema, president of UM’s U.S. operation, left the shop at year’s end and the position has been eliminated. Instead of a U.S. president, Seiler is hiring an executive to head the New York office, who will have oversight of a number of key U.S. accounts and capabilities including the national broadcast and print buying operations, business development, among others.In the new structure, “North America looks like a mini world with Canada, New York, L.A., San Francisco and J3 [the stand-alone J&J operation within UM] as sort of full-service entities reporting into global with the other geographical regions,” Seiler explained.Meanwhile Seiler’s global management team, including three new positions, is in place. Veteran agency and search consultant Jan Boyle has joined the shop in the new role of global managing partners lead. Boyle will work with the agency’s account heads (although they will report to Seiler) on major global and multiregional clients. Boyle will also serve as chief liaison with the McCann World Group, which houses sister creative and diversified service agencies such as McCann Erickson, in order to, as Seiler puts it, “insure we’re getting the most out of each other in critical markets around the world.”Seiler has also created a worldwide chief marketing officer position, appointing Scott Tegethoff to fill it. Tegethoff will continue to oversee the shop’s global Coca-Cola account across 49 markets. Huw Griffiths has been promoted to global director of research, a new position. Daryl Lee, president of global strategy and Quentin George, president of digital and new media, retain their roles while joining the global management team.UM has also just launched its new brand position, with the tagline, “curious minds for surprising results,” which replaces, “the next thing now.” One of the problems with the latter slogan, said Seiler, was that, “If you’re just bringing them new stuff all the time, so what? In an economy such as this, clients are saying, ‘I’m not sure I just want to be aware of all the cool things I might do one day. I’d really much rather know what you’re going to do for me today and how that is going to beat my expectations for what success looks like.’”UM clients agree. Jack Kennard, senior vp, global director of marketing services for wine and spirits marketer Brown-Forman, described the new positioning as a “welcome rebalancing of the role of art and science in media planning and buying.” The old slogan was good for its time, said Kennard, when markers were initially learning about new digital platforms, but it “focused rather exclusively on science, technology, the new and the novel. The new positioning reinforces the importance of human nature and the creative power of curiosity.”The curiosity theme has been a key part of the UM communications planning offering, whose development has been overseen by Lee since he joined the agency two years ago. At UM, Lee said, communications planning is “specifically about insights and the source of all insights is curiosity.” But Seiler has taken the theme and made it the core tenet of the agency, going so far as to develop a “curiosity quotient,” to assess new hires. Even the company Intranet is now curiosity themed, with a question of the day that is answered the following day. Compensation, to some extent, now will be linked to curiosity, said Seiler.“We’re fundamentally overhauling the training to insure that new people coming in have a certain level of curiosity and that the people that are here are kept fresh on what being curious is,” Seiler said. “We define it as open-mindedness that leads to unexpected or surprising results.”

Brand Marketing

The Curious Story of Universal McCann

Steve Mcclellan

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