What you need to know:

• Accenture Song's Australian operation is moving into media buying and planning as part of a global strategy.
• Its ambition is to provide end-to-end services across media, brand, communications, data & analytics, CX and digital transformation programs.
• ANZ boss Mark Green said the firm already had local clients using its media services as an add-on but "we'll win local clients" as media-only briefs against traditional media agencies.
• Rival consulting-led groups expanding across brand, CX and digital infrastructure like Deloitte Digital and Capgemini have ruled out moves into media because it was "too opaque".       

Toothpaste and tubes

Accenture Song’s ANZ boss Mark Green isn’t buying the familiar line from global agency holdcos that their specialist media and creative agencies can not be remerged into full service offers – former WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell’s oft-repeated quip was that the media-creative toothpaste was out of the tube, never to return. Agency holding companies unbundled their full service media and creative agency structures in the late 1990s – WPP's Mindshare was one of the first to be broken off with Ogilvy and JWT's media departments forming the new specialist media agency network – and holdcos have resisted calls for the past decade to bring them back together.

“That’s probably holding company sentiment; it’s not Accenture Song’s view of the world,” Green told Mi3. “We don’t have any legacy challenges to pull it back together. It’s all greenfields that we can design. We’ll see how it evolves. There is demand for it – clients are looking at more end-to-end solutions. We’re well placed to deliver that."

He said the firm is already working with global and local clients in Australia using other Accenture Song capabilities and "we will win clients locally” in media-only briefs against media agencies. Green would not name Accenture Song's early media clients in Australia. 

Globally Accenture Song appointed Kristen Kelly, former Publicis Group EMEA President for its Precision digital media unit, as its first Global Head of Media last September along with former GroupM exec Dean Challis as the head of Accenture Song’s US media practice.

In Australia Green said the media unit was “probably four or five people” servicing existing Accenture Song clients as an “add-on” capability. But he's planning expansion.

“It’s pretty early days, it’s got to be said. We’re not throwing down smoke machines. We’re looking at media and planning as part of customer experience. I don’t think we’ll get into traditional media buying but digital media buying we are. That’s the crux of where we’re heading globally – combining media with data, insights and customer to get the full funnel marketing approach.”

In last year’s sweeping tender for the Coles media, communications, CX and production contract, Accenture aligned with IPG-owned Mediabrands for the media component of the deal but ultimately lost to the Omnicom consortium after it scrambled mid-review to pull in Deloitte to neutralise Accenture Song’s capabilities.

Accenture Song’s media practice in Australia under James Graver quietly launched a few months later.

“It’s definitely not an aggressive start [by Accenture],” said one agency boss aware of the firm’s media ambitions. “You would have thought he [Mark Green] would just buy an independent. There’s enough of them to choose from.”

Accenture Song’s move into media diverges from other consulting rivals which are also expanding across CX, brand, marketing, digital transformation programs and martech. 

Deloitte Digital’s Australian head, Esan Tabrizi, is pushing a “creative thinking culture” and hiring agency talent because 'tech alone is not enough to drive differentiation" but he told MI3 last year there was no interest in a media practice because it was too opaque. 

Capgemini Australia boss Kaylene O’Brien told Mi3 her firm also had no plans to get into media buying and planning, or “ad placements” as she calls it. But Capgemini acquired creative and digital agency The Works via its $96 million acquisition in 2020 of listed Australian tech, CX, brand data and design group RXP, co-founded by former Telstra Mobile boss Ross Fielding. In 2018 RXP acquired The Works for $33m. 

At the time of Capgemini’s RXP acquisition, Fielding told Mi3 that the battle between consulting firms and agency holding companies would intensify and further consolidation was inevitable. “You've got big holding companies trying to get into consulting and consulting firms trying to get into the front end of the business. It’s a trend that's going to continue,” Fielding said. “Being able to pull together the ‘three Es’ of expression, experience and enablement is going to be important. There's no point in technology for technology sake. If it doesn't back up your brand and the experience you deliver, there's no point doing it.”

That’s a view held by Paul Bradbury, CEO of Omnicom-owned creative network TBWA which has also launched media, CX, data and analytics units to counter the expansionist moves from consulting firms. TBWA was appointed by the rebranded Kmart Tyre & Auto chain – now mycar – three years ago to handle its CX, media, advertising and branding remit. TBWA is tapping its sister media operation Omnicom Media Group to deliver back-end infrastructure for the creative agency's internal media team.  

“We want to play right across the total brand experience,” Bradbury told Mi3 this week in a podcast and interview with mycar Chief Customer Officer Adele Coswello, a former Wesfarmers Chief Financial Officer. “It’s a journey, we’re not totally there yet. But we’re learning and we’re growing. We've been working with mycar for three years. It's only now that we're starting to talk about it because we didn't want to blow our horn before we actually had some tangible proof that our model and approach is working.”