M&C Saatchi’s love of problem-solving the key to successful brand campaigns

M&C Saatchi Group has a strong orientation on how to grow their client's top line and market share. What sets the agency apart is that it is a business and marketing solutions company that happens to do advertising, and not the other way round. 

The starting point for each conversation with clients is defining their problem statement. It is this approach that has helped the agency land, and retain, some of SA’s most beloved brands.

These include long-standing partnerships — some more than 10 years — with Nando’s, Standard Bank and the Takealot Group, and more recent exciting client acquisitions such as the PepsiCo portfolio, including Lays, Liqui Fruit and Weet-Bix.

When the pandemic hit, the group took a step back and looked at a different world needing new ways of problem-solving at scale. It also meant applying this shift of focus inward to ensure the six companies at the heart of the M&C Saatchi Group could successfully operate as one tightly integrated team to continue to deliver connected creative solutions in the wake of the drop in advertising spend.  

In the industry, groups will often have a village of companies that happen to share the same campus, but work as separate entities. M&C Saatchi has broken down those walls and found ways to partner in cohesive and collaborative ways — down to an operational level — to orientate the group on what will be most useful to the client. 

Putting together the right teams with the right complement of specialities across the group, and rallying behind these teams, means M&C Saatchi can offer clients a full spectrum of services to add the most value.

This type of solution orientation is dictated by whether the client needs a media buying solution or a PR solution — for example, to package the group offering in the most effective way. The group’s partner model of owner-run companies include Razor PR, Levergy, Black & White, Connect and M&C Saatchi Abel. 

This partner model means senior people across the group actively guide the thinking to creatively find better ways to solve client problems, with smart solutions to build long-term smart partnerships. It’s less about structure and hierarchy, and more about being focused on the client’s world and giving them what they need. All players, including the partners, are on the field. 

Maintaining cohesion

When ambitions are aligned it is easy to align behaviour. The smart proposition means each company in the group subscribes to the same “brutal” simplicity of thought philosophy that permeates the DNA of its current leaders, partners and creative. The core of the business has always been to create simple solutions in an increasingly complex world. This underpins everything the group creates and extends across all six companies as a natural and easy cohesion. 

Creativity is the key to new and better ways of solving problems. The agency loves a good problem because it gives us the opportunity to use smart thinking to deliver a group proposition instead of a company proposition. And for clients, who need M&C Saatchi to seamlessly connect all the dots in the most powerful way, letting go of structures that might hold the agency back from landing a solution is smart thinking that hits the target. 

Creativity lies at the heart of any smart thinking

My definition of creativity has always been “original thinking that adds value”. The second part of that statement is important because the world is full of creative thinking — the walls of an art gallery are the perfect example of this. Where the difference comes in with smart thinking is whether the creative output is adding value and shifting the needle for clients. Is it making people think or feel differently about your brand? Is it shifting behaviour?

M&C Saatchi’s love of problem-solving is what drives the agency every day to shift the conversation with clients. But more than that, the group also loves smart solutions. The way that a smart solution is reached demonstrates the power of brutally simple thinking, why it matters in the world today, and how it is shaping the pursuit of being the most desired creative company in Africa. 

Here are six tips to establishing a smart proposition in a tough business landscape: 

1. Build the right teams — invest in people more knowledgeable than yourselves because the people with the best people win.
2. Diversify the broader group offering — ensure you have strong capabilities across a range of disciplines that speak to the client’s specific objectives to deliver real value.
3. Leverage the power of enduring partnerships — partnerships lay the foundation for not only creating campaigns that resonate, but they nurture a strategy that boosts a partner brand’s bottom line, increases market share and builds brand equity.
4. Make sure your ambitions are aligned — the key to solving problems with creativity that wins the hearts of consumers starts with marrying the right teams with the right brands. That connection between the agency and the client creates a conduit for the work, which is why it’s paramount to ensure each brand and the partners who service that brand are the perfect match. 
5. Build your foundations on trust — when trust is the cornerstone of a partnership, client and agency can push each other in the pursuit of better solutions, better ideas and better creativity that tackle challenges head on.
6. Having long-term strategic vision — with the incessant buzz of content, platforms and trends, it’s crucial to land on a sound, insights-driven and creatively-executed strategy. This provides a compass to navigate increasingly competitive waters and discerning consumers.

This article was paid for by M&C Saatchi Group.