SHIRTCLIFFE, DUSTIN, GARDNER TO DRIVE NEW SAATCHI DIRECT AND DIGITAL VENTURE
Saatchi & Saatchi today announced the launch of a significant business to offer New Zealand’s most powerful ideas in the digital and direct space.
Saatchi & Saatchi DGS will bring together three of the industry’s most respected players in partnership with Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand: Interactive Creative Director Aaron Dustin and Digital and Direct GM Tony Gardner are joining forces with Creative Director Matt Shirtcliffe to form the new venture (pictured).
Shirtcliffe, who is returning home from Toronto for the new role at Saatchi DGS (Dustin, Gardner, Shirtcliffe), led the Creative Department at AimProximity Auckland between 1999-2007 before moving to Proximity Canada. Other key members of the Saatchi DGS team will include Jen Rolfe (currently on maternity leave) and Executive Producer Teina Herzer.
Mike O’Sullivan, Saatchi & Saatchi Executive Creative Director says the group is delighted to bring Shirtclife on board: “Matt is arguably New Zealand’s most successful and high profile direct creative director – he’s created great ideas for clients such as Air New Zealand, Bank of New Zealand and Telecom and he has an impressive record at all the international and local awards, including Cannes, ECHOs, Caples. He is also the first Kiwi to ever be recognised with the Wunderman Award.
“We’re thrilled with his appointment and with the formation of Saatchi DGS, which is a logical move to expand our specialist offering. We were the first agency to offer digital more than ten years ago, and in the last four years we have expanded our digital and direct team from 10 to more than 30 people … and there are another 58 people within the agency with significant digital and direct experience,” O’Sullivan says.
Being named the number three agency in the world in direct at Cannes earlier this month further supported the agency’s credentials: “Virtually every major brief we are working on now has elements of digital, direct, shopper marketing and sustainability. We are passionate about seeing the world through New Zealanders eyes and understanding the most powerful ways to effectively engage people, not just to connect with them … or, even worse, interrupt and annoy them,” O’Sullivan says.
Saatchi & Saatchi DGS will operate out of the top floor of the Saatchi Parnell building. It will start with 32 specialists in digital and direct strategy, data analytics, creative, production and account service. It will continue to service current digital and direct clients of Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand including Telecom, AA, Contact, Toyota, Daihatsu, NZ Post, NZ Army, TVNZ, Griffins, New World and WWF.
Saatchi & Saatchi DGS GM Tony Gardner says the new business shows Saatchi & Saatchi’s ongoing commitment to offer the big ideas for the future: “That future includes digital solutions that appropriately combine ideas with data of various types, from more traditional CRM to online and mobile behavioural data. The open web is becoming a mass marketing tool and redefining customer engagement.
“We are in expansion mode and are committed to offering our clients the best user-centric digital and direct solutions, backed up by bullet proof systems and capabilities. The launch of Saatchi DGS dovetails with a global move by our network deep into the digital space, a move which has included the acquisition of Digitas – the global digital giant that has transformed from a direct background to one of the world’s top digital solutions providers, for US$2.5b 18 months ago. Saatchi DGS will partner with Digitas and the Saatchi Global Digital team, which is creatively led by Tom Eslinger, ex-Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand.”
Shirtcliffe says Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand has a global reputation as one of the very best ideas companies, with an unparalleled ability to marry creative with channel capabilities: “Agencies can pride themselves on having experts in channels and technology. But judging Direct Lions at Cannes this year was a pertinent reminder that, regardless of the channel, work will only succeed if it offers true emotional engagement. And that’s where I think Saatchi & Saatchi already has an unbeatable reputation. So I’m stoked to be joining them when they’re at their best and with a clear ambition to create the new ideas company of the future,” he says.
“I believe the future of communications is around that partnership between digital and direct smarts and emotionally compelling content. We can do all of that with Saatchi DGS. Plus there’s the added benefit of fishing for snapper with Mike off Waiheke. Not bad considering you mostly need an ice-saw to go fishing round here.”
35 Comments
Hi Matt! Welcome home.
Come on people. Move on from the Telecom ad entry. Here’s a new one. It’s been almost an hour and no one’s put the knife in yet.
Well, I don’t want to put the knife in but the problem you get with this type of setup (rather than a truly integrated agency) is the inevitable empire building that takes place. The new guys will be scrambling for as much of their clients budgets as they can get. Instead of asking what the best way to meet a given challenge is, they’ll say every problem should be solved with digital / direct. The other problem (which is always a difficulty with Saatchi’s) is that they’ll expect to be able to charge like wounded bulls. The guiding principle of direct is cost-effectiveness, which is probably why they’ve always been crap at it – the whole concept of value for money is alien to these guys. Is now the time for a really big, ambitious and costly new business venture? I don’t think so. If it wasn’t for Telecom Saatchi’s would be a mediocre agency at best – and they’re starting to look like they really don’t give a shit any more. Arrogance is fatal in this biz.
Remind me, when was the last time S&S announced they’d won any new business?
So 2.24, who is/are the truly integrated agencies?
So that’s the end of Saatchi Interactive then…right strategy but they are two years too late with this model.
Arrogance is fatal in this biz? Hell 2.24, one minute you’re talking about Saatchi and in the same breath you start talking about DDB. C’mon.
So when Mike O concepts with them, its Saatchi/DOGS ?
No wonder Saatchi did so well at Cannes – two judges on the Direct jury
Warning for all creatives here – keep your ego in control or this is what happens to you.
Is this anything like their Hyper Factory announcement? (all smoke and mirrors with no substance) P.S. if the Photoshop image used in the press release is anything to go by, the quality of work won’t be that high.
This is so funny! None of you have any balls! And I obviously don’t because I’m a woman.
Pffffttttttt
The money is now in offering an integrated product.
Brand is the loss-leader used by places like Saatchis and DDB as a means of leveraging the better earning business units such as Retail, Online and Direct.
DDB were the first to do it thanks to Douglas Faudet. Although some of their offshoots have failed to deliver, DDB consistently makes great profit for the group.
Colenso was a more recent entry into this field with Colenso 99. And as we all know, their retail division brings in more money than the brand side.
What we are seeing now is what happens in all recessions: Clients look to reduce costs (and to the people who’ve never experienced a recession before, advertising is the first cost that gets slashed).
Slashing costs also means reducing suppliers.
And this is where this sort of strategy Saatchis is pursuing takes hold.
It did so in the late eighties and early nineties. Agencies started offering more products that were labelled ‘in-house’. To a client this meant reduced cost – because they’re not paying for a replication of services from other communication firms that they may currently have contracts with.
Eventually though, the inevitable happens to these agencies – they become large and unwieldly. Slowly, factionalism happens.
And just after the recession has been successfully rode out by ‘the survivors’, the holding companies split them off or sell them.
And that’s the opportunity if you wish to own your own agency the easy way.
Right now, online is still kind of new-ish. I still have no idea of it’s value. But what I do know is that there is value there. Therefore, it’s ripe for plunder and profiteering. And fair enough, I’d do the same.
There are now a good number of senior execs and creatives out there who can do this field in a thoroughly professional manner. Luckily, and like with mainstream ad creatives, there are shitloads of juniors out there that can be hired for free to work in this area.
Lots of money + shitloads of juniors + low overheads like rent and start-up costs = a plundering good time.
Brand advertising bis dead. Well, only as far as making any money and forming a decent business out of it.
But the well-integrated agency business model is alive and well.
In the short term the medium sized agencies will die.
I know of at least two.
8.33, you are awfully well informed or wise, or both. there is no place for that kind of useful comment on this blog. please rewrite that post with more poison, and when you’re done that, let’s start an agency.
seriously though, really interesting to read. thank you for sharing your opinion/insights with those of us still learning about the business.
Welcome back from the far side of the world, Matt. You do know, though, that Saatchis’ idea of a good ad these days is to take something they found somewhere else and slap a client’s logo on it, don’t you?
Hey Lynchy
4.27 has raised a very interesting point. For obvious reasons you don’t have two people from one agency on any panel. But here we did, as this was obviously a done deal before Matt and Mike went to Cannes.
Do you know whether either did the correct thing and informed the Cannes people, volunteering to stand down? Also, after noting both Saatchis success and the fact that Matt’s work for Canada Bank (rather similar to his BNZ Body Parts) got up, do you know if either was on the sub panel that saw the other’s work get through as a finalist.
Perhaps a couple of calls to Cannes could lead to a very interesting article.
8:33 sounds suspiciously like Farndale to me. Good comment though.
Matt Shirtcliffe, it’s really lovely to know we’ll have you back in NZ. Look forward to catching up. And congrats on the start-up. Really pleased for you. Shaz
The internets weren’t invented when Douglas Faudet was at DDB.
You did well 8.33 until you came to the end. And then you couldn’t help but be the prick you are. Some people have been around so long they should just get out of the business. Who’s Douglas Faudet anyway?
To 3.01, it most certainly wasn’t me, thanks for thinking I could write something that good though – Craig
“DGS”? Is there still room for this kind of Big Agency Ego ™ in digi/direct? I guess we’ll see but I’m picking ‘no’ as the answer …
11:47am – You’re a dinosaur.
Surely you know that “digi/direct” is pretty much the only future for any ‘Big Agency’.
Whether or not egos fit into that is another question.
But you’ve certainly outed yourself as the worst kind of brand dinosaur.
3.28pm – I was ONLY talking about the ego question. I completely agree about brand being a loss-leader for big agencies. My point was: given the ego (read: price) of this move, will a client ever choose them over an apparently more cost-effective agency such as AIM, say, for digital or direct work? (And, no, I don’t work for AIM.)
Hello 10.09. Which shower did you come down in. The last one? How is it that you think an agency like Aim is ‘apparently more cost-effective’? Dream on. And of course you work at Aim. Or you wouldn’t be prattling on about them being more cost-effective. Personally I don’t think either of them will be cost effective. Neither Saatchi or SGD, DVD, DGS, whatever.
11.12am – I admit it: I’m the CEO and CD at AIM. Idiot.
Don’t be so harsh on yourself 6.31. No need to go calling yourself an idiot even if you write comments like one.
Saatchis is nothing but an arrogant bunch of thieves ’employing’ juniors in slave labour roles. I wish their new venture all the worst.
2:58 PM – I can smell the venom on your breath from here. Saatchi’s only employ two junior teams. I’m sure if they employed none you’d be calling them stuck up wankers who don’t help young people get into the industry. It’s comments like yours that need to be banned from this blog.
Boys I just hope you get a new photo when you can afford one. The current one is a bit scary okay? Don’t take it the wrong way but you don’t want to scare off any new clients. Good night lads.
11.24 that’s a valid comment but you’re not an art director I guess; it’s a blatant and to be honest pretty poor photoshop comp job! I’m guessing all three people are taken from old shots, clearcut and maybe even cut heads from said shots and pasted them onto the torsos of other staff wearing generic black shirts.
Pppfftttttt.
Good luck Mike and Matt. I am sure it will be another Saatchi NZ winner.
Yes its true the internet wasn’t doing much in my heyday but offering true through the line was quite novel.
DDB NZ remains at the forefront of total communication solutions but also big ideas. And big ideas are still the most attractive currency
Actually, for those too young to remember or who weren’t there at the time Doug was one of the first CEOs in the DDB Global network to initiate a Tribal presence in the Auckland office, wayback before the dot-com bust in 2001. Even if the digital downturn meant that venture didn’t get the client support it needed, he always supported WRC’s digital ambitions to the point where they won Cannes Gold Lion for best media integration for the mainly digitally driven Smirnoff half day off in 2001. Cheers Abe