• by Jack Feuer , December 29, 2006

Starcom

Oops, They Did it Again: Starcom Strikes Gold for the Fourth Time Running

Any shop can get hot. any group can have a good year. But few are great, even for a little while--let alone year after year.

So when we asked industry thinkers and media agency leaders to comment on Media's decision to name Starcom its Media Agency of the Year for the fourth consecutive time, you can imagine the swirl of wry commentary: "Is this a hereditary award?" asked one pundit. But there was no quarrel with the choice.

"Starcom gets it," says one longtime competitor. "They're always there. Everybody thinks they're the pinnacle agency."

Media magazine chooses the Media Agency of the Year primarily based on an agency's ability to demonstrate vision and leadership to the rest of the industry. And for the fourth year in a row, Starcom continued to lead its peers in vision, innovation, and strategic thinking. The media agency that Publicis Groupe Media leader Jack Klues built, and whose foundation has been strengthened by stars such as Starcom MediaVest Group Worldwide CEO Renetta McCann and smg/The Americas CEO Laura Desmond (all three executives, by the way, rose through the ranks at Starcom), embodies the idea that excellence isn't a race--it's a state of being.

"It's Starcom's ability to operate in multiple landscapes at once that sets us apart," Desmond contends. "It's not a big buyer but a poor planner, not a big think tank but a poor executor. So many companies today dominate in one area and then have weaknesses everywhere else for which they try to compensate," she explains, adding: "Agencies in today's world focus on their strengths and don't develop their opportunity areas. Starcom tries to get better across the board every year."

Starcom also understands--as opposed to merely giving the idea lip service--that leadership is not about simply racking up account wins. It's not about being the biggest or the richest. It's about being the smartest. Leadership requires not only bottom lines in the black, but a culture able to move boldly and swiftly to meet challenges without sacrificing basic business values.

By definition, if you're leading, you're first. Starcom is almost always first.

During the past 12 months, the Chicago-based flagship agency brand of Starcom MediaVest Group and steward of a hefty billion dollar-plus in TV ad spending negotiated what is probably the first genuinely platform-agnostic video upfront. It packaged ad buys seamlessly across broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, mobile, and other emerging video platforms. It became the first media shop to use Nielsen's minute-by-minute ratings to negotiate TV ad buys, a year ahead of its rivals.

And, while everyone else was busily renaming their media-buying operations and shuffling desks around, Starcom made real, fundamental changes in its management structure around the concept of "activation," anointing the industry's first chief activation officer.

"Starcom is a traditional agency that approaches media in non-traditional ways," notes Erwin Ephron, partner in New York-based Ephron Consultancy. The shop, he observes, "combines the old with the new in a more structured way than most. That's why they're an excellent choice. The whole environment is so nonstructured, everybody is trying to figure out where to play, and in this gray haze of uncertainty, Starcom is a reassuring figure."

Of course, there's nothing wrong with account wins. Leadership is also about winning, and Starcom does that regularly. And 2006 was no exception. The agency didn't ring up the highest dollar figure in terms of new-business billings, but it did quite nicely, thank you. It was a typical Starcom run: Don't pitch much, but win all, or almost all, of what you pitch.

In 2006, the shop scored Macy's--an estimated $200 million account--and Luxottica's $60 million business after reviews. Perhaps most impressively, it successfully defended more than a half-billion dollars' worth of incumbent business with victories in competitive pitches for its estimated $400 million Kellogg's and $240 million Miller Brewing Co. accounts. If blue-chip accounts that every agency wants can't find a better shop than the one they have, you know the incumbent's got something good going on.

Which is the case here, John Muszynski, CEO of Starcom USA, is happy to tell you. In the agency's submission form for Media Agency of the Year, the Starcom team noted that innovation in the "video upfront" was the most creative thing it implemented in 2006. Muszynski says the content made him do it.

"If we're going to say that content is king, and many people agree with that, if I find content that is a good fit for my consumer in TV, why wouldn't I want the same content in the digital space?" Muszynski explains. "The same reasons why that content might make sense for me in TV make sense in other media because the consumer doesn't see the difference. That's the part a lot of people are missing."

Starcom's outspoken CEO punctuates the observation by noting that "100 percent--I am not exaggerating--of my TV upfront players had digital extensions in their plans this year. Doesn't mean we took advantage of every digital opportunity, but every one of our clients had some form of digital extension beyond the TV schedule. That's being media agnostic."

The Nielsen deal is another striking example of how Starcom gets ahead of the curve. It struck its first pact with The Weather Channel, which also leveraged the minute-by-minute data that had been available to the entire market for months, and later inked similar deals with cable networks WE: Women's Entertainment and

AMC Network. As Starcom itself noted in its Agency of the Year submission, "Think about it: When the inevitable day arrives where all negotiations are handled on a second-by-second basis, Starcom will already be a year (at least) ahead of other agencies in terms of approach and leverage experience."

Still, perhaps the most telling accomplishment of 2006 was the shop's activation gambit. Just as Starcom and its sibling MediaVest did with communications channel-planning, the Media Agency of the Year in 2006 took something every other agency was chattering about and actually did it: Starcom USA named Chris Boothe the industry's first chief activation officer and created new functions for its management structure. Starcom gave birth to contact activation directors--specialist contacts on every major and emerging media contact point. The agency also created client activation directors--senior-level activation agents dedicated to each of its accounts. And it launched the Starcom Connection Council, a new way for senior managers to work to ensure the agency's success in cross-platform, client-centered executions. To ensure agency-wide digital convergence, the freestanding emerging media unit, Starcom IP, was absorbed into Starcom USA.

There's another area where Starcom steals the beat from rivals--talent. One search consultant calls it the agency's "bench strength." Last August, Starcom USA announced another generation of leaders ready for duty, appointing four new agency presidents: Steven Fueling, president and chief consumer officer; Andrew Swinand, president and chief client officer; Kathy Ring, president and Los Angeles chief operating officer (and point person on the Walt Disney Co. account); and chief activator Boothe.

Muszynski, who himself ascended to a leadership role when Renetta McCann moved up to CEO of SMG/The Americas, is particularly proud of the agency's talent pool. "I will put my executive team against everyone," he says.

As for 2007, it remains to be seen whether Starcom can, like the Pittsburgh Steelers with Super Bowls, win one for the thumb. But recall Laura Desmond's observation about getting better every year.

"How do we stay ahead? I get asked that a lot," Muszynski says. "I think it's three things. One, our passion for innovation. There's not a soul in our place who doesn't get jazzed by innovation. It is in our DNA. We don't want to do the same old shit. Second, we don't want to stop at being media partners--we want to be business partners with our clients. You have to be innovative and creative to help them solve their problems. Third, our talent is second to none. I don't know if that's due to our training. I do know it's why clients don't leave."