M&C Saatchi S&E North America Talks Explosive Growth, Company Culture and Creative Focuses for 2022
Steph Lund, Andrea Nirsimloo and Paul Anastasiadis speak to LBB’s Addison Capper about rethinking how to win new business during Covid, moving into a new, beautifully designed space in Soho, NYC, and offering all employees the chance to become a certified Mental Health First Aider
At the helm of M&C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment North America is Steph Lund, CEO, Andrea Nirsimloo, president and partner, and Paul Anastasiadis, executive vice president. The trio have been part of the M&C Saatchi Group for differing amounts of time but have been partners leading the North American business for around four years.
Since then - and despite Covid - staff growth has increased 155%. 2020 yielded the agency to exceed profit targets, whilst maintaining their staff salaries throughout and aggressively hiring throughout the pandemic. 2020 also saw the addition of 24 new client wins for the creative shop, in addition to 80% retention of their client roster, despite the year’s challenges. 2021 followed a similar course.
April 2021 saw the opening of a gorgeous new office in Manhattan’s Soho neighbourhood, under the design direction of Laetitia Gorra of Roarke Design Studio, formerly director of interior design at The Wing. It serves as a central hub for workers - many of whom are now remote - to convene when it makes most sense.
LBB’s Addison Capper collectively caught up with Steph, Andrea and Paul to find out more about their vision for the agency.
LBB> When did you all start working together? How did your leadership crew come to be?
M&C> We all came to the company at different points - Paul is coming up on 12 years (across Sydney, London and our NA office), Andrea on 10 years (NA) and Steph four years (NA). The partnership and ways of working could have gone a lot of different ways but thankfully the mutual respect and leadership values were completely aligned from the start.
LBB> What was your vision when you first took over the business?
M&C> The vision was to continue to build the best creative communications agency that specialises in sport and entertainment out of New York. We built the team off of a solid foundation of 20 employees with an impressive client roster across sport & entertainment. We were able to grow to a 70 person team with significant growth, in just under three years. It’s always been about building and nurturing the right talent and having that guide our business.
Ensuring our growth is steady is critical for continued success so we continue to be selective about the client partners we take on and the RFPs we respond to. We’ve had an obsessive drive to evaluate our unique agency strengths and continuously build upon them. We recognise the value we bring to our clients is the need to consistently evolve and we see ourselves as that agent of change.
Our most significant growth period was from 2020-2022 and our staff growth was over 88% to account for the growth; year over year, we will continue to be selective with the clients we take on to ensure our staff are supported and our growth is balanced.
We will always push ourselves to evolve across services and continue to build our team based on the best talent, across North America.
LBB> You merged the East and West Coast offices under one North America umbrella - what inspired that move?
M&C> Our global CEO Steve Martin decided to merge the offices under unified leadership (Steph Lund) in January 2020. Merging the offices and continuing to recruit talent outside of New York and Los Angeles allowed us to adapt to this new work-from-home reality and go after the best talent for our business, regardless of location. Hiring staff across the US has been one of the best evolutions of our agency - one that continues to be the best approach for our growing staff and broader business needs.
LBB> Despite what was happening in the world, 2020 was a really positive year for M&C S&E North America. Why do you think that is? How did you and the agency adapt in order to grow?
M&C> Yes, it’s incredible to look back on our growth, particularly over the last two years despite all the challenges we faced. It’s down to management that is flexible, adaptable and compassionate, and cultivating a team based on individual strengths. We truly believe that creativity is the currency that drives our business forward, and it's a mentality that is widespread across our people. Despite the challenges Covid presented to our staff, our clients and our agency, we had a relentless focus on innovation. We wanted to always strive to evolve how we thought about our processes, our creative concepts and our communications strategies to reflect cultural context and environment.
On top of this, we’ve always been a tight-knot group. Even as we grew, our employee retention has been above average in our industry. These efforts to build a strong foundational culture were capped off by winning ‘Best Places to Work’ from PRWeek for 2021.
LBB> You won 24 new clients, which is pretty mega. What lessons did you learn from pitching and winning new business during Covid that will prove useful in the future?
M&C> We put a lot of focus on how we effectively portray the values, culture and mentality of our agency and people through our response when not in-person. Most agencies would agree that the dynamics of a pitch process have shifted with Covid - both in how we prepare and build a response and how we present it to a prospective partner. We needed to consider new, compelling ways - written and spoken - that express who we are, why we believe we’re a fit for this business and what delineates us from other agencies.
LBB> Despite the positives, it's obviously been a really 18 months for a lot of people. How do you cope with the responsibility of leading a team through such difficult waters?
M&C> The complexities of being a leader in the last two years has presented challenges that employers haven't had to face in the last 10 years. It is a completely different world to navigate. Leaders must have the mental and emotional capacity to traverse the complexities of 2020 and 2021 and consider the broader impact on employee mental health, wellbeing and professional motivation.
We find solace in not taking any of our success for granted - we've seen such growth in a relatively short amount of time but I know that we must keep evolving and challenging ourselves to produce consistently outstanding work. And we're doing that - through hiring the right talent for our business, through leading with empathy and compassion, through putting our culture and community and people first - it all keeps us grounded and grateful.
LBB> You've just opened a new office last year and a lot of the design decisions were, I believe, informed by the changes in people’s work environment brought on by Covid. Why was it important to invest in a new office space given that so many people were and will be working from home moving forward?
M&C> Having a physical space regardless of our remote or in-person policies is incredibly valuable to us. We need a hub to host meetings, clients, and come together to ideate and simply to connect as human beings. The limitations this pandemic has put on physical meetings will continue to be a factor in years to come but we will always safely use the space for collaboration. We have a beautiful space in Soho that affords us to an open and flexible working environment. We got lucky with our realtor, Conor Krup, who understood us in an instant and found us our dream space. We worked with Roarke Studio for interiors, to design a beautiful, sophisticated, inspiring space, outfitted with a library, lounges, and minimal closed off areas/conference rooms.
LBB> Which piece of work from the agency from the past year or so are you most proud of and why?
M&C> We are privileged to work with every single client at M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment. From major PR-led activations through to single thought leadership pieces that can break major territory for our clients, they are all extremely fulfilling and equally important. It’s all about our client’s objectives and purpose.
We have a relationship with Natural Light Beer and throughout 2020 and early 2021, we were working very closely with them on the execution of the Natural Light Da Vinci of Debt: the world’s most expensive art exhibit. This was a huge undertaking both by Natty and our agency, collecting over 2,600 real college diplomas to build a unique art installation live in New York City to raise awareness around the plight of college debt. The collaboration between agency and partner, the commitment to the activation and the constant, positive problem-solving attitude was an amazing thing to be a part of.
LBB> Steph - you're a certified Mental Health First Aider, which sounds like an incredible thing to be generally, but specifically as a business leader. Would you agree with that? Does the knowledge you learned from studying for that course help you in your day-to-day of being a CEO? How?
Steph> The training and certification we offer and which I personally took part in has been a high point of last year and continues to play a critical role in our community and company culture. I feel we’ve always led with compassion but digging into mental health on a granular level and covering various topics of anxiety, stress, disorders, etc. can only strengthen leaders in how they approach and observe their staff.
