SPOTLIGHT | The End Zone
THREE STEPS TO HEAVEN
Saj Manzoor is CFO at McCann London, one of the UK’s largest advertising agencies. He is now also COO and has worked for McCann Worldgroup for over 20 years. Here, he tells Director of Finance about his working life
H
ow do you judge success? Success can’t be determined through a spreadsheet alone.
There are three key factors that are critical to our business, and if those three things aren’t working in harmony then commercial success won’t follow. Firstly, we are a people business and so need to create a culture within the organisation that energises, retains and attracts the best and most diversified talent. At the same time, we must deliver client
value: establishing strong partnerships so that we can deliver strategic solutions that address client challenges and objectives. And last but not least, we have to deliver great ideas which provide creative and effective solutions.
Which projects have you particularly enjoyed working on? My role requires a holistic view of the company, so in a broad sense my 20 years at McCann Worldgroup has been one huge, challenging and constantly evolving project. But looking at McCann London’s recent work, we’re particularly proud of Survival Billboard for Xbox, which was Europe’s most-awarded campaign of 2016. The campaign took one of the oldest methods of advertising (the billboard) and totally modernised it through an interactive digital campaign.
48 DIRECTOR OF FINANCE
The result? Dwell time increased from an average of eight seconds for a standard billboard to eight minutes for Survival Billboard. During 2017 we created some beautiful visual films for Wimbledon, celebrating everything the championship means to people, from ball girls through to ground staff and strawberry pickers. This campaign was a personal favourite of mine.
We also won a flurry of awards for our
Doctors of the World campaign ‘Reality Christmas’ which, through a series of greetings cards, brought the inconvenient reality of war torn areas to the fore. Another campaign that stood out for
me was our immersive campaign for Xbox: Dead Rising 4, where we used a series of Christmas light installations to take over the Brunswick Centre in the middle of London. The lights told the story of the zombie game in an interactive and unique way, never seen before.
How has the role of the FD evolved in recent years? FDs used to be seen as the guys who held the combo to the safe; they wrapped themselves in the comfort of balance sheets
and didn’t step away from their desks. Now you need to be a true business partner, both to the CEO and to the company. I’m very lucky to enjoy a relationship at McCann London that allows me to support the business and all of its functions on the frontline. It’s about staying connected to what we do and being involved at every level so that your impact and influence are felt well before the number lands on the spreadsheet. It’s certainly not just about adding things up. And the passion I have for the advertising industry doesn’t come from a spreadsheet or P&L.
What underlines your approach at McCann? I’m not a political or hierarchical person. If an account executive comes to me for help I give them the same attention as I would give my CEO. We all stand in line
‘ We must deliver client value: establishing strong partnerships so that we can deliver strategic solutions that address client challenges and objectives’
dofonline.co.uk
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