More than 18 months ago, EssenceMediacom North moved into its new home at WPP’s first UK campus outside of London.
“It has been really nice to watch this quarter of Manchester come to life, particularly this year. If we had this conversation six months ago, it would have been quite different as it has taken a year and a half for St John’s to feel like a functioning creative quarter,” Paul Cooper, chief operating officer at EssenceMediacom North, tells Prolific North.
It’s evident just how much the St John’s development has transformed into a creative hub. The likes of Cloud Imperium Games and Booking.com are close to the campus, with the buzz of the ice rink and festivities below visible from the meeting room we’re in with its floor length windows overlooking the city skyline.
“From a community perspective, it feels like the vision of a creative quarter has come to life,” he explains. “We were previously in Spinningfields, we liked it there but it felt corporate as a business in the creative services.”
And for EssenceMediacom North, moving into the campus is a world apart from some of its previous offices. 13 years ago, there were three staffers working in PPC in a basement with bars across the window – not quite the picturesque view the team now has.
“We’ve gone from 65 people at EssenceMediacom, then known as Mediacom North, with only three digital people. Now, the majority of what we do is delivering digital products and services,” reflects Cooper.
“A chunk of that came through the acquisition of EM Code. But even outside of that, from a collaboration perspective if you’re all in the same physical location, it’s easier to do.”
“A rising tide lifts all boats”
Over the past 12 months, more agencies have moved in or around the St John’s area and it now feels like there is a “community” in the city for creative businesses.
“It has been a tough economic consumer climate, and agencies work with consumer businesses, so it’s never the easiest but that does also create lots of opportunities. For me, seeing this area come to life, and our people being a key part of that, has been really nice and that was what we set out to do.”
And now WPP agencies based in the 67,000 sq ft building have “engaged a lot more in the business community”.
“I’ve always been a big believer in the industry in Manchester, particularly with the saying that a rising tide lifts all boats. As the community works together a bit more collaboratively and is stronger, I think it benefits everyone.”
Part of this includes the agency becoming a sponsor of MAD//UpNorth festival, set to be hosted in Manchester for the first time next year.
“We need to show the industry that what happens in Manchester isn’t just for people in the North, it is for people who are at the top of their game that everyone in the UK should have access to. It’s not about just giving access to people who happen to be based in this geographical location.”
From dinners or talks for the ScaleUp Institute hosted by Cooper to making the most of the building’s vast space for media owners to meet up, the WPP campus also supports “enhanced collaboration” between agencies, clients and other businesses in the city.
“The industry has probably grown up over the last four to five years, I think the space and the opportunity really fits with the ambitions of where the industry is trying to go,” explains Nicola Marsh, managing director at EssenceMediacom North, who also joins us for a chat at the campus.
Moving into the WPP Manchester campus was also the first time some staff had ever seen the branding, or truly felt like they worked for a WPP agency.
“That’s definitely a significant advantage, both for our people and also for a client within the business community because it is a better known brand,” Cooper explains. “It has definitely helped us, and that wouldn’t have happened without this building.”
Staff also now have the opportunity to work across WPP more widely as an organisation, move to another location, or explore other roles they may not have considered before.
“It offers another opportunity for young people who are ambitious or wanting to do something different,” says Marsh.
“It’s been big in terms of culture and attracting people back to the office”
Around 370 EssenceMediacom North staff, with the addition of EM Code, are now based at WPP’s Manchester campus which has the “highest occupancy rate of any WPP campus in Europe”.
The agencies have now “really learnt to live in the building”, injecting personality across the numerous floors it occupies. And there’s far less sticky notes than on EM Code’s floor.
“We were really lucky and had a chance to design a building at a time when we were all returning to work, and working very differently,” explains Marsh.
“It’s been big in terms of culture and attracting people back to the office, creating an environment where people remember what it’s like to work with other people, and why it’s really important in terms of your own development.”
Now a firm fixture and friendly face at the agency, you’ll find ‘coffee Chris’ on the top floor who has been part of cultivating that memorable agency environment.
“If we go back 10 years to our old building, ‘coffee Chris’ used to have a three-wheeled van with a coffee machine in the back,” Cooper explains.
Every day at 11am, coffee Chris would rock up to the agency when it was based in Spinningfields until he was asked to set up a machine in the agency’s cafe in exchange for subsidising staff coffees. And he’s been with the agency ever since, still remembering everyone’s drink orders.
“With his great tunes, he serves brilliant coffee and it creates a communal space for people to sit, have lunch, and they don’t need to leave the building anymore,” says Marsh.
“It means people from different departments can catch up, so I think the building itself is really important when it comes to attracting culture.”
“A third of the jobs we have today didn’t exist five years ago”
As a leader on the GMCA Employer Integration Board (EIB), Cooper explains the big focus is now on nurturing the next wave of talent in schools and colleges, outside of the traditional world of universities, with representatives from other companies on the board including the likes of Siemens, the NHS and Booking.com,
“A third of the jobs we have today didn’t exist five years ago,” he says. “You need to partner with education.
“We know that creating a pipeline of talent is the reason that we’ve all got really successful, thriving businesses in different sectors.”
In the midst of a talent shortage, businesses in the city have now rallied together to “provide a better skillset the industry needs for school leavers at 18 and for those who want to go straight into work” by looking beyond university graduates to feed that talent pipeline.
From operating an apprenticeship scheme to open days, where young people are invited in to work on a brief and hear from senior leaders, being part of the WPP campus has helped EssenceMediacom to “influence and play a greater role in what’s happening across Manchester”, adds Marsh.
When it comes to retaining talent, although senior staff at larger agencies might be “prime picking” for other businesses thanks to the training and development on offer at EssenceMediacom, Cooper says churn is not a “bad thing”.
“If we look over the past few years, the people that worked with us and gone on to do great things, I see that as a sense of success. Quite a lot of the agencies that have been set up in the past five to six years were all ex-staff members.
“I think that’s good for the industry because nine times out of 10 they’re not competing with us,” he explains. “I see that as beneficial for the local community and the industry.”
“It was strategically to deliver that service to WPP clients” – EM Code rebrand
Following a seven-year integration with EssenceMediacom North, digital agency Code Computerlove has now completed a ‘strategic’ rebrand to EM Code with Tony Foggett, founding partner and CEO of Code Computerlove, stepping down after 25 years.
“I think what you call yourself is really important, so the key thing here is allowing EM Code to be a part of an EM culture, but retain the Code culture. It’s only two words, but it’s really important,” explains Cooper, who played a pivotal role in both the acquisition and integration of EM Code.
“It was strategically to deliver that service to WPP clients, to tighten up that end-to-end customer journey and user experience. In order to do that, everyone needs to feel like they’re on the same team, but allowing people to retain their independence in their way of doing things.”
Tony Foggett is still a shareholder in the business, alongside Louis Georgiou, and has been “pivotal” in working with the team to deliver the integration.
“This last year, particularly, Tony worked closely with us on essentially delivering an outcome that would mean he didn’t have a job once we delivered the integration piece and how we’re going to do things moving forwards, that was then the right time for Tony to move on. “
With the addition of EM Code’s services, it will help the agency to unlock opportunities with clients and deliver a “point of difference”.
“I think we can all be honest that as agencies, particularly media agencies, we all think we’re really unique and really different, but we all do quite similar things.
“We have a different planning tool and different ways of working, but genuinely, we do see that as a point of differentiation. What we’re saying is that we will look at your entire end-to-end acquisition and look at how we help you grow as a business.”
The future: “AI is there to enhance creativity”
As for the future, he says this is “just the start” as the agency plans to do more work on end-to-end journeys and continue innovating with AI.
“One of the things that we will be doing more of is working with our clients to deliver more relevant customer journeys. I think we’re beyond the mass personalisation world that AI, in some ways, can help to deliver that. And we’re working with AI a lot there.
“We’ll continue with what’s made us successful, from working with d2c to scale-up brands, but adding that we will look at everything end-to-end for you.
“Whether it’s your agency or in-house teams, we’ll do that to really tighten everything up so when you do spend money actually, it will be far more effective.”
EssenceMediacom also runs a chunk of WPP’s global AI work out of Manchester, with the creation of AI assistant EM Sidekick which covers everything from operations through to ideation, and it’s a tool now used in around 120 countries.
“WPP has asked us to recreate that in the open platform, and for that to power a lot of those things within WPPs open platform. It’s fantastic for those teams, because they get to build something that is now used by all WPP global clients, and not just us.
“It’s tested on our clients first, so it has evolved from within the North and the UK client base, and then rolled out globally. So we will be doing more of that.”
Although it hasn’t been a “mad recruiting year” across agency land, AI won’t be hindering EssenceMediacom’s hunt for talent anytime soon as it eyes further growth heading into 2025.
“We’ll need more people. I don’t see AI taking out the need for people, I think our people will turn up and spend their time doing different things. As a business, it will make us more efficient but it doesn’t mean a team will go from 10 people to one.
“It might mean that over the next few years, more people may be interfacing with the client and working on a more consultative basis,” he explains, but emphasises that AI will simply transform how agency staff operate in future: “AI is there to enhance creativity and it allows people to take good ideas and interrogate them. It takes away some of the lower heavy lifting, which frees up those people to be more involved in our client businesses.”
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