Vodafone marketing boss Ben McIntosh: This time, it will be a happy marriage with JWT
Vodafone has been through five creative agencies in six years. But with a new marketing and sales structure now in place, Vodafone’s new consumer business director Ben McIntosh tells Mumbrella’s Simon Canning that this time things will be different.
The head of marketing for Vodafone, branded Australia’s most toxic client by agency bosses just a few weeks ago, has promised a new approach to agency relationships after giving the telco’s advertising account to J. Walter Thompson.
After three years with Vodafone as director of sales, last month saw Ben McIntosh assume the newly created role as director of the consumer business unit, putting sales and marketing under a single banner.
He stepped into the role just weeks after the brand’s relationship with Cummins & Partners came to an end. He immediately moved to appoint JWT to the business with a pledge that he would bring to an end the brand’s revolving door relationship with agencies.
In his first interview since taking on the role, McIntosh is frank, telling Mumbrella the issue of Vodafone’s agency relationships had been addressed with JWT at the very start of the pitch.
For it to work both teams they need to be nice, good, and professional.
It’s not the JWT team who you need to be impressed with (even just saying this in this interview is a worry as it’s implying the problems lie with the agencies) as it’s probably a systemic issue within your team. What would happen if instead of changing your agency team you changed your marketing team?
Having read Mr McIntosh’s vision for the future, I’m wondering if he’ll be there in two years.
“I can’t even remember what they showed me to be honest.”
As a creative this makes me die a little inside. Good luck JWT. I hope the “novelty” of presenting creative never wears off (for you at least).
That business, and the people that sit in chairs there have a culturally ingrained, fundamental contempt for suppliers. I can’t recall ever being offered a glass of water inside that building.
The marketing team was rude beyond belief – passive aggressive and plain aggressive (with one or two laid back exceptions).
I’d stop trying to find new agencies and find a new team instead.
Bravo for talking publically about the issues they have had. But seriously, surely there should have been some statement about what they have done to eradicate their appalling behavior in the past??
Agree with what s/he said.
How do you appoint based upon “I can’t even remember what they showed me”. Demoralising for all those who are forced to be involved.
Hi HB Pencil,
In fairness to Ben this was a very long interview and I have had to leave a lot on the floor.
In relation to the creative, one comment he did make was that while he was focused on making sure Vodafone and the agency had the right chemistry, he said he was impressed by the ideas presented not just by JWT, but by all of the agencies pitching for the business. He said at creative level it was a very close competition with world class thinking.
Cheers
Simon – Mumbrella
it’s possible that I’m just a dirty cynic but why do we only see a bloody great picture of Mike Connaghan in these articles and nothing of the JWT team who actually won the business?
seems to me that the Large Fromage is using this as some much needed PR for himself, given the struggles his group has had over the past few years. Given he was running JWT Sydney the last time they (rather disastrously) had this business and was then at the helm of STW when Ogilvy won and lost it (and I think there may also have been an STW Team Red thing I’m forgetting about), if I was both agency and client I’d be rather keen to keep his designer beard as far from the business as I could
I have never encountered disrespect or incompetence quite like I have working on a Vodafone account. A soul crushing, revolving door of mediocrity. Never again.
Hi fleshpeddler,
I have a confession.
Sometimes in a longer article, readers stick with you longer if you break it up with a picture, even if it’s not 100% crucial to the story.
In this case, we happened to choose the person who leads WPP.
And I have another confession – when we use our long form article template – which this is in – it defaults to using the images pretty big.
But I can confirm that not only did we not hear from Mike ahead of time asking us to use his picture, he also did not specify how many pixels wide he wanted it.
I hope that helps clear it up.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Pretty key information, wouldn’t you say? Leaving this out certainly indicates that Vodafone cares little for creativity and the agency they select. A little unfair for Ben knowing your audience.
Good to hear the full story.