News//Press
Interview: ‘The playing field has become a concrete compound’
HORIZONT-Interview with the managing squad of Demner, Merlicek & Bergmann after the parting from Rosa Haider-Merlicek about the changes within the agency and in the market field per se.
HORIZONT: The sudden parting with Rosa Haider-Merlicek mid-November caused quite a stir and sparked numerous rumors…
Mariusz Jan Demner: It is quite an honor for the agency as well as Haider, that the industry is giving so much thought to a personnel issue. The fact that we have won ten new business accounts within the past year does not seem to spark as much interest.
HORIZONT: Well, it’s not just any personnel issue. Rosa Haider-Merlicek is held as an exceptional creative who has brought numerous accounts and a great deal of awards for the agency over the past 17 years.
Demner: No doubt about that, Rosa Haider-Merlicek is a solitaire, a star with the pretense of a star. There is nothing wrong with that, but seeing how agency business develops, it is rapidly moving toward a different direction: we must increasingly make more out of less. More than ever, we need a synchronized overall performance.
Bergmann: Furthermore, it is said overall performance that brought all these accounts throughout the years.
HORIZONT: Mr. Demner, what do you mean when you say ‘the way the agency business has developed’?
Demner: Us agencies are in the midst of a tremendous upheaval, which is hardly noticed by the public eye. International agencies that wrote advertising history are being merged or are disappearing completely. The playing field of advertising, which was once well doped and resembled a mellow meadow can be compared to a concrete compound nowadays. Personally, I have never experienced cyclical parameters looking this bleak at the beginning of a new year. This sets agencies under enormous pressure for change and in order to deal with this change-process, perfect teamwork is essential. This leaves very limited space for raging egos. Ultimately however, that is the big break in this industry. The new management, which was appointed in May 2013 – consisting of Francesco Bestagno, Christin Herrnberger, Katharina Schmid, Helmut Schliefsteiner and Evelyn Schmidt-Lukele – is determined to set up this agency together with Harry Bergmann and myself to live up to the standard of the last decades- namely, to be number one on the market. In certain ways, what we practice here has laboratory character for the entire industry.
HORIZONT: Pardon me, but the fact that Rosa Haider-Merlicek has a strong and adversarial personality is hardly new to you – this has been a well-known fact for over 17 years in which she has worked for you. Why the sudden termination?
Harry Bergmann: The last straw usually has a certain abruptness.
Demner: Believe me, this was not a decision made by myself and it surely was not an easy one. After all, it’s not just Rosa Haider, it’s also Franz Merlicek’s wife. He of course was put into an impossible situation. We have dealt with this delicate situation – which required a great deal of sensitivity – for years and managed a rather constructive and reasonably peaceful collaboration. However, as part of the changes we were facing, we reached a point of no return.
HORIZONT: Which ended in instant dismissal. How did it come to this drastic step?
Demner: All I have to say to this is: we have gone separate ways. Everything else is between Rosa Haider-Merlicek and the agency.
HORIZONT: One of the indirect triggers for the escalation was the restructuring of the creative department. What exactly took place?
Francesco Bestagno: Based on the classic approach, our four to five creative teams were managed by two Creative Directors – one Copywriting/ Text CD and one Art CD. This scheme stems from a time where advertising consisted mainly of TV- and radio spots, as well as ads and billboards. Digitalization and fragmentation of media led to our business becoming increasingly complex and detailed. After a joint analysis we came to the conclusion that it is by far more effective and efficient if we split the teams up, meaning eight Creative Directors, each with smaller teams, working for fewer clients. This of course brings the logical consequence that the creatives can work with their clients on a more intense level …
Bergmann: … and furthermore it means that the performance of the individual is far more visible. We avoid treading water, overstaffed meetings and are simply faster. Because rapidness has become a new quality feature within the industry, something that was non-existent to this extent before.
HORIZONT: Doesn’t that inevitably lead to a decline in quality?
Demner: This industry is notorious for doing everything in the very last minute – no matter if you have six weeks or less. Bergmann recently stated: capacity is aeriform, it fills every room up, which it gets. 21 people are currently working on his new retail customer Merkur. If those people don’t work together in a timely manner, we are in a pickle.
Bergmann: Especially the time available for finding and working out ideas is decreasing rapidly. For production however we still take the time we need – that is where one immediately notices if it was done in a hurry.
HORIZONT: How is the digital world anchored in the creative process nowadays?
Bestagno: We started off by staffing two people in the digital business. We had the digital agendas bundles in a department, which grew organically – until we had the resources to assign the digital professionals to their own individual creative teams.
This moved the entire exchange dramatically, because a daily transfer of knowledge was taking place – in both directions. Furthermore we stocked up our teams in the areas direct marketing, customer relationship management and moving image.
Demner: We are a think-tank for brands and our creative teams are focused to create media- and campaign unrelated ideas for the respective brand and develop their specific challenges.
HORIZONT: What about strategic planning in-house? Is the allocation of specialists to individual teams – as practiced in the digital department – a role model?
Katharina Schmid: Traditionally speaking, planning is part of account management. Because we wanted to give this important area an even bigger focus, we bundled it into a department. This is something that distinguishes us from other agencies. It is rather unfortunate that I have to say that. In a recent meeting of the Strategy Austria Association someone told me that I am one of the last planners still employed by an agency in Austria. In this respect we are already quite an exception. However, to have a planner sit on every team is something we are very far from. What we do find very important however and focus on, is training the consulting teams in strategic planning. That way they can develop into actual account managers.
HORIZONT: How does the change-process settle on the structure of key account management?
Christin Herrnberger: For us it is not about restructuring, but much rather about continuous advancement, which evolves more and more in the direction of comprehensive project management. We have eight account directors whose client allocations are not synchronized with the creative teams.
HORIZONT: This autumn you presented a new tool – Brand Magnetism. How did it catch on?
Schmid: The feedback was tremendous and the interest of both existing clients, as well as companies that are not our clients is enormous. Together with the m.core-Institute of the WU Vienna (University of Economics in Vienna) we created a tool that allows us to measure the magnetism, aka the attractiveness of brands. We are currently working on an extension of this tool for the world of media with our media sister-agency Media 1.
HORIZONT: Lets get back to the actual reason for this interview. Will Franz Merlicek leave the agency?
Demner: This is a question I cannot answer and that does not run on a rational level. Merlicek is a highly valued partner throughout the entire agency. For years he has not been part of the Management Board and has sold his shares of the agency early on. He did not want to have any further corporate responsibility. He solely wanted to focus on what he enjoys the most – creating excellent advertising. Together we found a constellation that worked wonderfully for over decades. If his personal situation would allow for him to carry on as before, we would all be rather thrilled about that. For now we want to give him time to adjust to the new situation.
HORIZONT: And if it doesn’t work out – will the agency name change?
Demner: We never thought about that. Why should we? We will cross that bridge when we get there.
This interview was released on January 16th, 2015 in the print edition of HORIZONT print edition 1-3/2015