2006 MARQUE AWARDS
Media Agency of the Year: OMD Canada
With help from OMD, McDonald’s and The Weather Network teamed to deliver time-of-day and weather-driven meal messaging to Canadians
In an awards show characterized by stoic acceptance speeches, Lori Gibb took a page from the Cuba Gooding Jr./Jack Palance playbook.
OK, so the VP, group director of strategy for OMD Canada stopped just short of one-handed push-ups. But as OMD kept racking up gold awards at last month’s Media Innovation Awards-an industry-leading four in total, all for work on the McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada business-Gibb made a series of increasingly animated trips to the winner’s podium.
The MIAs, however, were merely the capper on what has been a terrific 18-month period for the Omnicom agency. It added 22 new clients and more than $100 million in billings in that time ($28 million this year alone), while maintaining longstanding relationships with several high-profile clients including PepsiCo, Campbell’s Soup Company, DaimlerChrysler and Apple.
After landing the Wrigley Canada and Alliance Atlantis Communications AOR assignments last year, OMD’s new business wins in 2006 included Niagara Fallsview Casino and Resort, Canadian Blood Services, computer manufacturer MPG, M&M Meat Shops, Porter Airlines and Parmalat (won with sister agency BBDO), plus digital assignments from Bose and Yellowpages.ca.
RECMA, the Paris-based media agency research company, is projecting 2006 billings of US$540 million for OMD and awarded the agency its maximum grade, A+, in its recent “Competitiveness in Pitches” report. David Lerault, RECMA’s marketing and interactive director, says the grade was awarded on new business wins. Retaining the Campbell account- which is aligned worldwide with Mediaedge:cia-was also “a good performance for the agency,” he says.
In a reflection of its new business wins, OMD’s staff has increased to 198 from 140 in 2004, and it is beefing up in key areas like digital (the OMD Digital practice, headed by Lee Smith, grew to 13 people from just one in 2004).
It’s that combination of new business wins, industry clout and media creativity which makes OMD Canada Marketing‘s selection as 2006 Media Agency of the Year.
Janet Callaghan, a principal in Toronto media consultancy Callaghan Osborne, says it’s getting a handle on the less glamorous aspects of the media business that has made OMD such a force in the Canadian media industry.
First of all, she says, it has successfully cast aside its reputation as a cost efficient purchaser of media and become known for buying cost effectively. Callaghan also praised OMD president Lorraine Hughes as one of the industry’s brightest minds, particularly following in the larger-than-life footsteps of former OMD president Ann Boden. “Lorraine followed an industry icon, and she’s carved out her own very distinctive, very different niche,” says Callaghan.
It helps, adds Callaghan, that Hughes is supported by managing directors Anne Myers, Bruce Baumann, Gilad Coppersmith and Sherry O’Neil, as well as regional managers Rick Sanderson in Vancouver and Mike Chiasson in Montreal. “It seems to be coming together for them.”
As Canada’s only awards show honouring media creativity, the MIAs were proof of the standout work OMD has done for McDonald’s since the quick-service restaurant chain shifted its business to the Omnicom agency from Cossette as part of a global consolidation in 2004. McDonald’s VP of marketing Laurie Laykish says many of the MIA-winning programs, including the McDonald’s Wake-Up Call and the McDonald’s Weather Eye, are held up as best practices by the marketer and “very well received” by McDonald’s global network.
The forced union held the potential for disaster, but Laykish says OMD is “a part of the success of our brand at all levels-national, regional and local. They really work as a strong partner with us, as well as our agencies and our franchisees.”
Hughes says media creativity is “an area (OMD) wants to own.” The agency’s impressive MIAs showing-which also included a pair of silvers and four certificates- demonstrated its ability to generate creative media ideas in everything from a traditional medium like magazines to new media like mobile and interactive.
More importantly, says Laykish, these creative concepts are always grounded in sound strategic insights.
Such approaches have led to OMD being recognized as one of the standout agencies within the OMD network. “I think we can go toe-to-toe with anybody in the innovation area and the digital area and show our credentials,” says Hughes. “I think we are very, very progressive.”
