McCann Sydney: Mumbrella Creative Agency Review – merger offers fresh start for an old school brand

The newly published Mumbrella Creative Agency Review examines Australia’s top 30 ad agencies. Today Robin Hicks examines how McCann Sydney has fared over the last 12 months.

In our survey, McCann Sydney finds itself propping up the rest in a category no agency wants to seen as deficient in – creativity. So it just as well that the agency’s ECD, Michael Raso, who jetted in from the network’s New York office in January 2011, has performed extensive surgery on the creative department. More recently, the reverse take-over by Smart in September promises a fresh start for the struggling Interpublic agency.

Three months after Raso arrived, four of his creative team were shown the door and eight have been brought in, including Neil Flory from Ogilvy Sydney as deputy creative director and Patrick Chambers as art director from Taxi, an agency in Canada.

Campaigns for Newington College and MasterCard’s priceless music series are signs that the creative product is improving, but it’ll be a while yet before McCann’s work is troubling too many awards juries. One panellist remarks: “Exciting new creative department. Too soon to know what effect that will have – but surely the only way is up.”