| What is the total number of employees at your office and nationally? How has this changed over the last 2 years? | |
|---|---|
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | 25 |
| Alexandra Green, VP | approx 65 (T.O) - Our agency has grown over the last 2 years |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | approx 72 in Toronto and 115 nationally. While now major layoffs as a result of the pandemic occurred, the Toronto office has experienced significant staff turnover with a high exit rate since many hiring freezes lifted at the top of 2021. |
| joe, vp | 72, 125 |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | Toronto = 72 approx. / Canada-wide = 115 approx.; over the last 2 years we've essentially re-hired to replace departures so the number of employees hasn't really changed drastically. |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | 16 at my office (up from about 12 years ago) - I believe we are at about 70 nationally |
| What are the total revenues for the agency (substitute & indicate billings if this is the only available number): | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | CAD$6.5MM |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | N/A |
| joe, vp | NA |
| Katie Muir, SVP | 4,070,300 |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | n/a |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | 2,476,109 |
| List your clients for the past 2 years (grouped by industry category, indicate past/current client). Cut and paste from another document if this helps. | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | Procter & Gamble: Consumer Brand (CPG) - Current Bayer Pharma: Health - Current Imperial Brands: Consumbles - Current Merck Pharma: Health - Current Fiserv: Fintech - Current GLH: Hospitality - Current Helsinki Partners: Government relations - Current Business Finland: Government Relations - Past Finnish Flow: Government Relations - Current |
| Alexandra Green, VP | Food & Bev (PepsiCo, Egg Farmers of Canada) - current CPG (Royale) - current Travel (GoRving) - past Household products + services (T-Fal) - past CPG (P&G Oral Care) - past |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | Loblaw Shoppers Drug Mart PC Financial Joe Fresh Burnbrae Farms Canada Bread Northland Molson Coors Corby VinFast Sinai Health Frito Lay Pepsi Tostitos Look Good Feel Better Mars Wrigley Dyson Lyft Emirates Ceva Animal Health SickKids Tourism Australia Osmo Intuit Porta Indeed Kijiji Tokyo Smoke Beacon Fortinet Northland ($1500 rolling retainer), including P&G Project ($2,000 in forecast) Royale Pivotree Amazon PHAC- Dementia KDC/ONE PHAC- Dementia Egg Farmers Canada EQA Duracell |
| joe, vp | BEV: Molson Coors Corby Wine and Spirits Auto: VinFast Food: Frito Lay Canada |
| Katie Muir, SVP | Food & Beverage/Consumer Kraft Heinz (current) Nando's (current) Diageo (current) Dairy Farmers of Ontario (current) Coca Cola Bottling (Past) Mars Wrigley (current) Andrew Peller Ltd (current) Aphria (past) Beauty: ILIA (current) Youth To the People (current) L'Oreal (current) Evereden (current) Sephora (current) Health: Canada Health Infoway (current) St Michael's Hospital Foundation (past) Montreal Children's Hospital (current) Automotive: Hyundai (current) Travel & Tourism: Tourism Yukon (current) Union Station (current) Tech: TCL communications (past) Geek Squad (past) Misc: DHL (past) Guinness World Records (current) GMA Accessories (current) Hydro One (past) |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | This is just a taste of some of our clients (see below): Molson Coors (2016) AOR Strategy, creative, media relations, influencer, social, XM, corporate communications Loblaws Inc (2013) AOR Strategic planning, creative ideation, design, media relations, influencer engagement, media partnerships, experiential, data solutions Canada Bread Company Ltd (2017) AOR Strategic planning, creative ideation, design, media relations, influencer engagement, media partnerships, experiential Kijiji Canada (2019) AOR Strategy, creative, media relations, influencer, social, experiential Pepsico Foods (2016) AOR Strategy, creative, media relations, influencer, social, XM, thought leadership, crisis communications Intuit Canada (2016) AOR for Turbo Tax - Strategy, media relations, influencer, social, corporate communications Egg Farmers (2012) AOR Strategy, creative, media relations, influencer, social, XM, thought leadership, stakeholder relations, crisis communications Shoppers Drug Mart Inc.(2010) Strategy, media relations, influencer, paid social, media partnerships, experiential Irving Consumer Products Ltd.(2020) AOR Royale - Strategy, media relations, influencer, cause/CSR, corporate communications, employee communications Burnbrae Farms Ltd. (2019) Strategy, media relations, influencer, paid social. Sickkids Foundation (2011) Strategy, creative, media relations, influencer, XM, stakeholder relations, issues management |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | Tech/Gaming Clients: Amazon (current) Dyson (past) Electronic Arts(current) Fortinet (current) Kijjiji (current) Lyft (current) Press Reader (current) Fashion/Beauty/Luxury: Ambari (past) McArthurGlen (current) Home Furnishings: Article (current) Government: BCSC (past) PHAC (current) Grocery, Food & Bev: Burbrae (current) Canada Bread (current) Corby (current) Molson (current) Northlands (current) Pepsi (current) Loblaws (current) Mars (past) CPG: P&G (past) Royale (current) Petcare: CEVA (past) Health: Clearly (past) Dental Corp (past) Shoppers Drug Mart (current) Natrol (current) Optimi (current) Vitacore (current) Financial Services: Coast Capital (current) Cannacord (past) Turbo Tax (current) Industry Associations: Egg Farmers of Canada (current) Not for Profit: Habitat for Humanity (current) Rideau Hall Foundation (past) Property Developer / Real Estate: MLA Canada (past) Travel & Tourism: Revelstoke Resort (past) Tourism Australia (current) Pursuit (past) Natural Resouces/ Mining/Forestry: Teck (past) Automotive: Vinfast (current) |
| Bullet point the services you offer your clients: | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | - Brand lifecycle management - Influencer marketing - Omni-channel media relations - Issues & crisis communication |
| Alexandra Green, VP | - account management - strategy concept and development - creative concept and development - media relations - influencer sourcing and management - digital asset creation - industry research - competitive analysis |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | - Public relations creative plans - Public relations amplification plans - Media monitoring - Media training - Design servinces - Strategy planning - Social media strategy - XM strategy, planning, and execution |
| joe, vp | media relations influnecer relations creative ideation community management crisis comms media training monitoring and reporting message development go to market strategy dev |
| Katie Muir, SVP | Corporate & Brand Reputation Communications Consumer & Product Communications Crisis Communications Social Media Outreach / Influencer Management Content Marketing Creation Event Management Strategy Measurement Media Training |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | Integrated Corporate and Consumer Campaigns Media Relations Public Affairs/ Advocacy/Stakeholder Influencer Relations Executive and Thought Leadership Profiles Proven track record in Sustainability, Foundation, DE&I work Experiential and Event Management Analytics and Reporting |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | - communications strategy - media relations - influencer relations - social strategy - Crisis comms - media training - Internal Comms - Experiential Events - CSR - Creative - Design |
| What percent of new revenue comes from the following sources: | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | 6-10% |
| Alexandra Green, VP | 61-70% |
| joe, vp | 81-90% |
| Katie Muir, SVP | 21-30% |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | 61-70% |
| Expanding on your answer above, how has most agency revenue growth come in? | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | Organically through our UK & Europe-based clients. |
| Alexandra Green, VP | On the accounts that I touch, most agency revenue growth has come from growing our services that we provide to our current clients. |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | N/A this falls beyond by purview however this would be the same information provided by Carrie Makrigiannis, Alex Green, and Joe Cariati |
| joe, vp | cant speak for the full agency, but for my teams, a large % has be YOY growth with existing clients. through delivering storjng work and great results, client mandates have grown. additionally the good work we have done with existing clients has led to recommendations from clients to friends who are looking for PR support. additionally having past clients who stay in touch we have been able to secure meetings with potential clients. |
| Katie Muir, SVP | It depends on the year. In 2020, much of our growth came from organic business as RFPs were few and far between. Kraft Heinz for example, grew from 200K to over 1M in business while others like GMA Accessories grew from 20K to 200K. In 2021, much of our business came from new business growth with multiple wins in the back half of the year: Diageo, Dairy Farmers, DHL, Coca Cola Bottling, Evereden, L'Oreal, Youth to the People, ILIA, Mars Wrigley. |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | My guess would be a combination of three things - organic growth of existing clients, new business and creative/strategy services. |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | Our most revenue comes from referrals and growing current clients. We have a strong reputation in the marketplace so steady stream of clients coming to us. |
| If any, how do you see these sources of revenue growth changing in 2022? | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | We see additional growth across our current client portfolio. We would like to shify some of the balance towards new new growth. |
| Alexandra Green, VP | Hoping to secure new business wins and looking for more opportunities ourselves to pitch new business. |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | The agency is shifting to a creative first model with significant investment in strategy, research, and creative teams. This will create new opportunities to services existing clients and attract new business to our portfolio. |
| joe, vp | moderate growth in 2022- need to showcase our creative chops to try and expand more. |
| Katie Muir, SVP | I think we will see a shift back to organic growth in 2022. We won a considerable amount of new business in late 2021 so this year will be a focus on onboarding new clients and growing our current base. |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | My guess would be the same as above. We are continuing to focus on our creative hub services and will focus on using those to growth existing business and gain new business. |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | I would like to see us doing more proactive prospecting and higher value/deeper work with a smaller list of clients |
| Do you use any project management / account management software to help manage your accounts and any production / billing? | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | Maconomy as an organisational tool enables us to analyse some aspects of client accounts. We look forward to the imminent roll out of Asana as an effective account management platform. |
| Alexandra Green, VP | no, although I know part of the team is doing a trial run with a project management software. |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | The Molson team leverages asana and slack, however the wider agency does not. |
| joe, vp | asana for project management- it helps the team stay on top of daily tasks, which is helpful given how much is going on. for billing citizen uses maconmy |
| Katie Muir, SVP | Generally, no. Some of our account teams leverage slack. Billing is managed via Plus Company directly. |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | We use Maconomy for billing. |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | Scheduled to start using Asana Use Google Docs extensively for collaboration Maconomy for billing |
| What strategic resources do you make available to your teams? For example, do you have any proprietary strategy, research, data, tools, or any services you subscribe to? | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | We subscribe to a variety of tools, including CreatorIQ, Brandwatch, Cision, LSN. |
| Alexandra Green, VP | I don't believe any of our tools are proprietary, with perhaps the exception of CIQ, however we do have a number of programs the office uses to gain insights, data and research. |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | Yes we offer access to WARC, meltwater, and our strategy/insights team. |
| joe, vp | we have an internal strategy team that uses several tools including newship, |
| Katie Muir, SVP | As a small/mid-sized team we don't have many internal strategic resources available to the team. We do much of the research, insight mining, strategy and creative ourselves and at times, lean on the support of freelancers. Internally, we leverage Meltwater for insights and social listening and Taggar for influencer insights. |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | We have a number of resources that our strategy team uses, but the entire team also has access to WARC and to data/info. from our social vendors/contacts at TikTok, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | Several tools and services related to insights and research, media monitoring, measurement. |
| Are client leaders held accountable for executing and monitoring the initiatives, and activities for client Organic Growth plans? Please explain. | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | Yes. Each client leader has a business plan for their individual portfolio of clients and/or sector area of responsibility. Each contains targets that ladder up to the company's Balanced Score Card KPIs, and the market's overal business plan. |
| Alexandra Green, VP | yes, client leaders are responsible for ensuring the program is staying on track, and always looking for organic growth opportunities. |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | Possibly. These goals, if created, are not shared widely or in my experience, with the individuals working on planning and execution to secure the new business. If goals are set at all, they are not known, and therefore accountability is dubious. |
| joe, vp | yes i believe so, each year account leads are pushed to grow the business YOY with existing clients and are connected with each week to discuss existing mandates and growth opps |
| Katie Muir, SVP | Yes. Each senior leader on the team develops a Portfolio plan at the end of each year, outlining plans for the year to come. They are each given a growth target for the year, a number we check in on regularly to track progress. |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | We are accountable for taking care of executing/monitoring and Organic Growth activities - but we don't have a mandatory way in which we plan organic growth. |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | I would not say we have detailed organic growth plans |
| How would you rate your account teams’ effectiveness at driving Organic Revenue Growth — based on having documented plans, a methodical approach, and being assertive? Please explain. | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | We have undertaken recent leadership training that focused on improving business acumen. The team has a good unsderstanding of organic revenue growth for their individual portfolios, but we have not yet systematised a common approach across the office. There are, as a consequence, some differences in approach and effectiveness. |
| Alexandra Green, VP | 6. I think some teams do this more than others depending on their account mix. I think we can improve on having documented plans, but believe that we are being assertive and always showcasing clients ways we can help grow our services that would lead to an impactful ROI for their business. |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | My teams are strong. We consistently look to push the limit with ideas, creative planning, and strive to bring unique and innovative thinking therefore opportunity to the client (resulting in increased budget). While an organic growth plan may not be in place, we have created our own team templates, processes, and executions to ensure that the best work is being put forward and that we hit fee targets for budgets. |
| joe, vp | i would say we are ok, not great, but there is the desire to do it, where we struggle is pushing the client to find the money, sometimes we settle for lets keep it on the radar for later |
| Katie Muir, SVP | The team has traditionally been very successful at securing organic growth and following through on portfolio plans. I would rate their success rate at 8/10. I do think more focus could be placed on putting new ideas in front of clients, and being more assertive around planning dollars/strategy. |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | I think we are mainly effective through our assertiveness and our relationships with the clients, rather through anything like documented plans, etc. |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | I would say we don't currently have a systematic approach to organic growth |
| When you consider Organic Growth, specifically, where does the team most need to improve? Where is the greatest opportunity for the team? | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | We need to perfect a team-wide approach to identifying organic growth opportunities and strategies. |
| Alexandra Green, VP | I think the greatest opportunity for the team is twofold. 1. Ensure that the ENTIRE team understands the opportunities here - not just the VP on the account 2. Structured organic growth plan/template that we could learn how to populate and be held accountable for it. |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | - Leadership needs to allow for more time to plan so that senior team leads can focus on recognizing growth opps, strategizing solutions, and selling in ideas/services. We need to prioritize staffing so that execution can occur efficiently, vs constantly existing is state of over exertion, overtime, and stress, with multiple staff exits. This will allow teams to evolve from being reactive executers into proactive business generators. - Per above, there is opportunity for internal focus and staffing prioritization which once stability is achieved, will allow senior leaders to properly resource talent to work on and prioritize organic growth - Overall we need to be able to move faster. Competitors in new and emerging agencies and areas of work are vying for business and are moving at the speed of culture. If we cannot keep up and even strive to move as fast them, be ahead of the curve, we will lose. This ability to react, recognize opportunity and respond with a plan QUICKLY heavily relies on the resourcing prioritization mentioned above. |
| joe, vp | 1. being more proactive about it--- often feel like we are struggling to keep up that we arent thinking more proactively about our clients business and finding opportunities 2. the ability to push the client and sell through ideas when there is little to no budget |
| Katie Muir, SVP | 1. Managing and monetizing scope creep 2. Assertiveness around retainer parameters and monthly overages 3. Monetizing extensive rounds of planning and strategy 3. Selling through additional services (i.e. corporate comms, media training, digital, social media) |
| Carrie Makrigiannis, Vice President | I think per above, learning the best way to create plans for organic growth that won't add too much more work to our plates and will ultimately make our efforts more effective. |
| David Brodie, Senior Vice President & General Manager | A few opportunities: a) Just having a more structured approach and clear accountability. b) Having our national account leads more focused and accountable for growing and maintaining client work across the country not jus in Toronto c) Having a more regular approach to putting proactive ideas in front of clients and showing we are adding value without looking like we are just pushing for more budget. |
| Is there anything else that would provide insight into your Organic Growth goals opportunities or challenges? | |
| Mark Cater Managing Director UK | EMEA | We are looking at how we can ratchet up our sales techniques and to systematise how we go to market with a single consistent approach. |
| Alexandra Green, VP | n/a |
| Jessica Cooney, Associate Director | - An incredible amount of time is wasted via manual admin processes with silo'd information and old programs that do not leverage data and information efficiently. Much larger corporations and competitors are successful in this area and have long been connecting business processes with automated programming and leveraging internal data and learnings for management and producing client results. Project management tools are a relatively low cost mechanism to greatly improve business function and I feel this is one of our biggest areas of weakness. Therefore this could be viewed as an opportunity for growth, and I beleive will aid with our internal resourcing prioritization needs |
| joe, vp | think ive covered it |
| Katie Muir, SVP | I think Middle Child's biggest challenge and opportunity is scope creep. We are a team of pleasers who get exceptionally strong client scores. We're 'yes' people and we love to please! But we also need to monetize that work and ensure we are billing clients for all the hours worked. |