The Managing Partners of McCann Leeds have outlined their plans to double the agency’s revenue this year, having successfully hit all its forecasts in year 1.
Olly Sowden and Gavin Shore work at the head of McCann Leeds, launching the agency outpost at the end of 2019, not long before the arrival of COVID.
The agency was founded not as a satellite agency off the back of a regional client win – instead, said Sowden, as “a McCann office that was opened off the back of an opportunity to serve a region.”
It now works with clients which include Edinburgh International Festival, Yorkshire Water and Hargreaves Lansdown, working across a range of sectors.
For Sowden and Shore, they are McCann Worldgroup in Leeds, rather than simply McCann Leeds – with a regional identity and the ability to work directly with clients, but also a gateway into the wider McCann Worldgroup, which is awarded the world’s most creative and effective agency network in the world.
McCann Leeds came about based on the fact that “McCann Worldgroup are very much about servicing brands in-region,” said Sowden. “There wasn’t a McCann office that serviced Yorkshire and the North East. With the movement of people like Channel 4 and Sky Betting and Gaming to Leeds, it felt like a really good time.”
However, they had no intention of “launching and opening in Leeds with any arrogance [around] ‘McCann’s here now to solve everyone’s problems’.”
They see themselves as a brand’s “third option” – brands head down to London for “big, above-the-line work”, said Sowden, or use a regional integrated agency. McCann Leeds is the alternative – “a global network, but on our clients’ doorsteps.”
They have resource on the ground to make projects a reality, and are able to be truly self-sufficient, but simultaneously offer the weight and scale of McCann’s global network.
Growth and recruitment
McCann Leeds, after a successful year building momentum despite COVID, now has big plans, the pair confirmed.
“Our future plan is around growth – we’re looking to double our revenue in year 2,” said Sowden. “And in line with that is the size of the team.” Having recently doubled in size, their aim now is to hit 18 people within the two-year mark.
They are currently on the recruitment campaign, and are committed to finding the right people for their agency, said Shore. “One of the things we’re really keen on doing is recruiting like-minded people.”
Their recent hire of Alex Hamilton, Head of PR & Social, was part of a new direction for the agency in which they are looking at new propositions to add to their creative offering – though they continue to focus their growth on high-level strategic creativity.
“A lot of the work that we were doing was creeping into activation,” said Sowden, and given that this was primarily in the fields of social and PR, “it was a logical step to build on that as a proposition in its own right”, with Hamilton leading and growing it.
The agency is now considering what the future beyond its new PR and social division will look like – with the potential of adding more propositions to their offering over time.
“What we want to do is maintain creativity as our core offer,” but identify the offshoots, said Sowden. “The first one was PR and social, the second one may be media, and the third one may be something else.”
The biggest goal for the agency is a long-running one. “We’re full-on pushing for fame,” Shore added. “We know we need to create and own a piece of work that makes us famous, whether that is self-initiated or whether that is for a client.
“We’ve got processes in place pushing that hard, but it’s a lot easier said than done. You can’t just create fame easily.” They also want to find their landmark client which will make them a go-to name. In the same vein as McCann Manchester’s work with Aldi, they’re “looking for that client that we can move forwards together with.
“We need to put ourselves on the map and walk the walk.”
