Dubai

Don’t think all the mega deals — Facebook and WhatsApp ($19 billion) and Google and Nest ($3.2 billion) — are happening only within the confines of digital media. There have been quite a few forged in traditional media and within the ad industry it is so reliant on. Omnicom and Publicis are trying to nail down the final pieces to their $35 billion blockbuster deal.

But John Sheehy, president of global operations at Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), is not about to get all excited about mergers and acquisition plays. Instead, he prefers working on the human element that is at the core of any good — and sustainable — marketing and advertising ploy.

“While much time and attention is given to merger/consolidation and the pricing advantage, the real value creation comes from — and will continue to come from — our ability to deliver consumer engagement,” said Sheehy, while on a recent visit to Dubai. “You cannot cut your way to growth.”

Even then, the Group has gone in for recent strategic buys, with Sheehy seeing this as a growth driver particularly for the emerging markets. Last year, it acquired a digital marketing agency (Convonix) in India, which added to the “bench strength in the marketplace’.

“We’ve even been able to export these capabilities from India to other parts of the world, which is tremendously exciting,” Sheehy said. “In South Africa, we recently announced a strategic acquisition of Lighthouse — another digital company.”

These have helped with the Group’s mix of what is on offer to clients. “At Starcom MediaVest Group, we are focused on growth through innovation and investment. To illustrate, three years ago SMG purposely restructured investment around the changing consumer behaviour [digital, data and analytics and content]. As a result, we now lead the industry with 43 per cent of our global revenue coming from non-traditional channels.”

But, surely, there is still value to be had from companies coming together to harness better value? “The pressure going forward will be around creating new products and partnerships to continue our focus on the changing consumer,” said Sheehy. “Consolidation only makes sense if it is driven against future consumer needs for deeper, more relevant and real-time engagement.”

Trying to be in sync with future consumer needs is by itself a big ask. But traditional media agencies now need to do so while countering the heavy poaching of its clients by tech and social media giants. The argument being if a client wants to notch up a presence on a social media platform, deal directly with the platform rather than go through an agency.

But Sheehy insists traditional agencies have the tools and the abilities to counter such threats. “With fragmentation across channels and consumer behaviour, the ability to deliver holistic strategy and activation is what creates effectiveness and efficiency,” he said. “From an effectiveness perspective, this plays out as campaigns are delivered and optimised in the converging world of data, search, social, display, mobile, e- and m-commerce and traditional in real-time and in a growing programmatic world.

“Clients do engage and experiment directly with platforms. [But] in a world of growing complexity, our clients need and are looking for us to be the centre for simplicity.”