Is Nick Brien Saving McCann or Screwing It Up?

As big accounts walk out the door, its top exec says he just has a PR problem

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Entering his third year as chief executive of McCann Worldgroup, Nick Brien admits he has a problem. But it’s not the one you might expect for a man overseeing the company’s embattled flagship, McCann Erickson. The world’s largest agency network has struggled to win new U.S. business while bleeding global legacy brands like Nestlé’s Nescafé and ExxonMobil­—ending a 100-year relationship with the oil giant. And in another stinging loss, Lufthansa—the world’s fourth largest airline—took off for a small independent German shop amid sniping press coverage that legendary McCann is fast losing altitude.

Is Brien’s problem that he hired too many outsiders with big titles and less than relevant experience to reinvent one of advertising’s strongest agency cultures?

Is the problem that the ambitious—some say too ambitious—media-agency turnaround exec focuses too much on the Big Vision at the expense of serving clients in the trenches?

No, none of that.

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