Nick Brien announces new leadership structure at McCann Worldgroup

In an exclusive interview featured in Campaign’s December issue, Brien unveils the network’s new Executive Committee (ExCo), comprised of the CEOs of the key markets in the region: Michael McLaren (Japan), TH Peng (China), Prasoon Joshi (India) and former Lowe India CEO Charles Cadell (South East Asia and Australia), who previously worked with Brien at Leo Burnett in London.

Brien’s new model breaks a 20-year tradition at McCann, which until now gave the Asia-Pacific president the additional responsibility of running the agency’s biggest - and arguably most complex - market, Japan.

The dual management challenge led to a series of changes at the top for the IPG network in recent years. The abrupt departure of Kevin Ramsey in 2009 and subsequent arrival of Michael McLaren gave the network its fourth regional chief in as many years, following Max Gosling’s retirement in 2006 and the end of Eric Einhorn’s short tenure in 2007.

“The [regional] role as it is designed at the moment is mission impossible. No one has been able to do it, and no one can because Japan is its own massive set of complexities…The new structure will allow Michael [McLaren] to spend more time in Japan, making it brilliant,” said Brien.

The APAC ExCo will begin to operate officially from January 2011 and will report directly to Brien in New York. The new structure essentially gives the global CEO four direct reports from the Asia-Pacific region.

According to Brien, the ExCo’s role will be to meet quarterly to review progress against agreed business goals for the year, while setting strategy for 2015 growth and development objectives.

Each CEO on the ExCo will assume a role to drive creative excellence (Joshi), commercial expertise (McLaren), Talent Superiority (McLaren), Strategic Innovation (Peng), Technology Enablement (Cadell), Marketing/ New Business (Cadell) and Digital Velocity (Peng).

The key drive areas will reflect the McCann Worldgroup Transformation agenda of strategic innovation, creative excellence and performance measurement, all underpinned with a greater sense of collaboration across the Worldgroup companies, reflecting the new McCann Worldgroup business model structure.

According to Brien, Asia-Pacific remains a critical growth region for McCann Worldgroup and its global clients, demanding that the newly created ExCo team focus on the growing importance of China and India within the global economy, whilst recognising other high-growth regional markets, such as Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan and Philippines.

Full interview with Nick Brien in Campaign’s December issue.