What Would McDonald's 'Agency of the Future' Do?

By Alexandra Bruell 

Tech companies like Facebook and Google are selling creative ad services. Media agencies are increasingly selling digital ad space. And now, a creative agency is playing the line-blurring game as it brings digital publishing and agency staffers together to service one massive account.

McDonald's said Monday it will consolidate its creative account with Omnicom Group following a months-long review in which the incumbents, Omnicom-owned DDB and Publicis Groupe's Leo Burnett duked it out for the coveted business.

DDB didn't win on its own. Employees from Google, Facebook and the New York Times' content studio T Brands supported the pitch, and they will be embedded at an agency that Omnicom is customizing for McDonald's, DDB CEO Wendy Clark said in an interview.

Staffers from the outside companies will support content creation and contribute to a team of around 200 employees, including people from Omnicom Media Group's digital-buying and data hub Annalect, its small creative shop Sparks & Honey and its digital agency Critical Mass, among other agencies.

The new McDonald's agency offers a glimpse not only into the agency of the future, but also the agency of the past, when media buyers and creatives lived under the same roof. The company is taking that structure one step further with the embedded digital media talent.

Nearly all major digital and traditional media publishers have their own ad services groups through which they help brands create "custom" or "branded" content for their own websites. Omnicom is trying to tap into the expertise and relationships they've built up.

With the "size and scale" of the McDonald's account, "it makes sense for them to have people embedded as part of the agency," said Ms. Clark. "They can see the inner workings and know the campaigns."

The new customized shop will move into the office of media agency OMD in Chicago, said Ms. Clark. Staffers from Alma, the multicultural agency, will also sit with the team.

She wouldn't comment on what was in it for staffers from the outside companies beyond saying that they want to be part of the agency.

Media and multicultural accounts, which are both overseen by Omnicom agencies, were not part of the McDonald's review.

Large media agencies like OMD, which has worked with McDonald's for a number of years, buy a lot of media inventory from companies like Facebook and Google.

The concept of media embeds, and digital media embeds specifically, isn't new. P&G and Google experimented with swapping employees in 2008.

Nor is the dedicated agency team model. Remember Enfatico, the now-defunct dedicated shop that WPP created for Dell? There are also success stories, such as Omnicom's Nissan United and WPP's Team Ford and Plus for Chanel.

As people from different agencies cozy up under the same agency roofs, ad shops and media publishers have increasingly teamed up, and more media agencies have taken on the role of media seller. Last year, Deep Focus inked agreements with a handful of digital media companies to co-create content for brands, and WPP and Publicis continue to take ownership of digital media inventory that they then sell to clients.

Write to Alexandra Bruell at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 30, 2016 15:08 ET (19:08 GMT)

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