Leading With Culture: Jo Bacon’s Vision for M+C Saatchi Group UK

If London is the epicentre of M+C Saatchi's global network, then Jo Bacon is the agency’s cultural pulse. Since stepping into her role as group chief executive officer nearly a year ago, Jo has not only instigated a phase of rapid evolution and high-profile hires (including Gen Kobayashi to chief strategy officer and Rob and Lolly as chief creative officers), but also galvanised an idea that has long lived within the agency's DNA: cultural power.

Jo’s leadership arrives not as a disruptive force, but a clarifying one – it’s less about transformation, more about amplification. “It’s not about changing how we work,” she says. “It’s about unlocking what’s already here.” The London HQ, under Jo’s stewardship, has become the birthplace and blueprint for a renewed global philosophy – one that recognises that culture is no longer a vertical but a strategic imperative across every client, every sector, every channel, every discipline.

Jo’s background reads like a roadmap for this shift. Her career spans client and agency roles, entertainment and journalism, strategy, and creativity. From leading marketing and creative across Viacom brands including the transformation of Channel 5 and MTV to reshaping global brand narratives for Dove, she has long operated at the intersection
of content, culture, and community. Her leadership style mirrors this interdisciplinary career: fluid, intuitive, and unafraid to break traditional silos.

“I’m a very differently-shaped leader,” she says. “I’ve always worked where brands meet culture – from youth and drinks brands to digital journalism and behavioural change campaigns.”

That holistic view of modern brand-building is echoed in the talent she has brought into the London fold. The new leadership team isn’t a collection of like-for-like hires – it’s a curated ensemble of expertise across PR, media, brand, sport, psychology, and editorial. “It’s like putting the Avengers together,” she says. “We all knew and respected each other before – we shared values, taste, and ambitions. Now we’re formalising that into a real cultural capability.”

The idea of ‘cultural power’ emerged from the ground up, particularly from the sports marketing team and the untraditional creative formats being delivered across the agency’s global accounts. “We weren’t inventing something new. We were naming and systemising something that already existed,” Jo adds.

The roll-out of the ‘Cultural Power’ philosophical positioning across the network isn’t a surface-level rebrand. Cultural power reflects a deeper understanding of how brands must behave in today’s ecosystem: not as broadcasters, but as participants. In a fragmented media landscape where audiences generate more content than brands do, the only sustainable strategy is one that’s rooted in relevance, agility, and authenticity.

“The cultural power approach is strategic, measurable, and adaptive. It recognises that culture isn’t something you bolt onto a campaign. It has to be baked into the strategic foundation of a brand.”

What’s unique about M+C Saatchi Group's approach – especially in London – is that cultural thinking is not outsourced to a specialist. It lives and breathes within every team. Journalists sit next to PR planners. Behavioural scientists collaborate with brand strategists. Creative technologists riff with social media natives.

“It’s a melting pot,” says Jo. “And because of that diversity of skillsets, our solutions are more original, more instinctively cultural.”

Rather than flatten that diversity into one approach, the agency’s ambition is to build frameworks that allow creativity to flourish within clear strategic guardrails. That’s where measurement comes in. Underpinning the cultural power proposition is a proprietary Cultural Power Index – a new measurement tool that helps clients assess how meaningfully they are participating in culture, across differentiation, influence, and impact.

“It’s not enough to just show up in a cultural moment. You have to have a clear role and value in that space – and be able to measure that over time,” says Jo.

Before her leadership, the London office was already producing work that embodies the philosophy. The ‘Help Us Help You’ campaign for the NHS turned behavioural science into a national rallying cry. Government briefs, climate campaigns, finance brands and fashion activations have each been treated as a chance to shift the culture around a topic rather than simply as just a creative task.

And for Jo, these aren't one-off campaigns. They’re ecosystemic. “We’re not trying to win the internet for a day. We’re trying to create long-tail cultural relevance for our clients.”

Perhaps most crucially, London isn’t working in isolation. As M+C Saatchi Group evolves globally, it is doing so as a truly networked creative system – one where regional CEOs from the US, Europe, the Middle East and APAC are strategically aligned and personally connected. “We talk every day. It’s not top-down. It’s borderless,” she says.

This agility – regional independence paired with global cohesion – has become the key differentiator in an era of consolidation and restructuring across the industry. While others merge and resize, M+C Saatchi Group is sharpening its identity.

“The big networks were built for a different era. We were born from culture. Now we’re defining what comes next.”

At the heart of it all is a return to creativity – not as decorative or performative, but as the ultimate differentiator in a noisy, overly-commoditised landscape. Jo remains a creative at heart, committed to ideas that challenge, inspire, and endure.

“Creativity is still why we all get out of bed in the morning. And when you embed it with real cultural understanding, it doesn’t just cut through – it connects.”

M+C Saatchi Group UK, under Jo’s watch, is reinventing itself by getting clear on its core offering. The talent, the thinking, the capabilities were always there. Cultural power just gave them a shared language – and now, a global mandate.