“I Feel as Excited about Marketing and the Opportunities for Brands Today as I Did at the Start of My Career”
Andrew Harrison, recently appointed group managing director at MCA is responsible for leading the company’s global operations as it enters its next phase of growth and innovation, having doubled its revenue in 2022.
A former UK Marketer of the Year (Marketing Society 2003), Andrew brings with him a holistic perspective across the advertising and marketing industry with a career that has spanned UK, Europe and Asia over three decades.
Prior to joining MCA, Harrison ran his own marketing consultancy practice across Asia whose clients included leading multinational brands such as Colgate Palmolive, Dairy Farm and Hongkong Shanghai Hotels as well as agency groups like WPP and Omnicom. Before then, Harrison was in high profile CEO roles for 10 years in the UK at Müller and RadioCentre which came after building a successful career in marketing director roles at P&G, Coca-Cola and Nestlé.
In this interview with LBB, Andrew shares his vision for the company’s growth over the next few years, the key themes to look out for and why now is a particularly exciting time for brands.
LBB> Congratulations on your latest appointment as group managing director at MCA. You were initially brought in as chief client officer to drive the company’s global growth agenda with a particular focus on Asia. Can you tell us about the impact you’ve had so far?
Andrew> I’ve known Pat Murphy (MCA Founder) for over 30 years now since we worked at P&G. I was originally on the brand management side and Pat was on the production management side. More recently, I had my own specialist marketing consultancy business out in Asia and I started consulting for Pat around the MCA business and growth opportunities there. Coming out of that initial assignment in Asia, he then asked me to start looking at growth opportunities more widely across his business.
It was all about taking what’s working really well in Asia and translating it to Europe and vice versa. What best practices can we share across the business?
I quickly realised that there are two different growth opportunities strategically. One around the day to day operations with current clients - expanding quickly and organising ourselves to take advantage of their growth. And the other around longer term development, including some of the strategic themes that clients were asking us about - particularly sustainability and D&I. Pat then suggested I take care of the day to day side of things so that he could focus on the future.
LBB> What elements do you think will be key in driving global operations forward over the next year?
Andrew> From the day to day operations point of view, it'll be all about driving best practice. What are the things that are working with clients at the moment? If we've got a particular thing we're doing really well with a client, I’m looking at how we can translate that throughout the markets, sharing best practice, but also developing and expanding the offer.
On a longer term view, a key imperative is sustainability. We've just signed an agreement with Ad Net Zero and one of the things we'll be working with them on is AdGreen, which is their carbon calculator, building the functionality and reporting directly into our own proprietary tech platform, Control Room. This allows our clients and their agencies to have immediate access to their carbon footprint calculation for each production at the bidding stage as well as the final production stage.
LBB> You have years of experience as a leading marketer before joining MCA. What insight does this bring you that you are able to apply to your role at MCA?
Andrew> That's a great question. When I was client side I learned the importance of deeply understanding your consumer and doing all your research on their needs, habits and practices. Now, being on the service side, it’s the same for our clients: I’ll always champion and question what it is about our offer that gives our clients better, richer, more meaningful support. Understanding the viewpoints, dynamics and challenges from client, media owner and the agency side, I hope gives me a more rounded perspective.
The second thing is to focus on delivery of a brilliant proposition for our clients. I see that as the three legs of the stool: with great creative work, value for money and sustainability at the heart of any proposition. Ultimately, it all comes back to serving the client. We summarise this now as where creativity, technology and sustainability unite.
LBB> Looking at the next few years, what do you think brands need to pay attention to most when it comes to successful advertising and marketing?
Andrew> Most of all, brands have got to be very clear, concise and consistent around what they stand for. Then when they're taking advantage of all the new technology and different approaches to producing content, they can do so knowing what's on strategy, what's on brand, what's consistent with the brand positioning and what's not consistent. Because if you're not clear about what your brand stands for, what its tone of voice is, then you're going to have an awful lot of artificially generated content and activity that will take your brand to a place that isn’t necessarily right for it. Machines and robots are going to be producing some of your content. So you need to make sure that they're producing stuff that’s on brand.
LBB> Any parting words?
Andrew> I think we're at a really exciting time. I feel as excited about marketing and the opportunities for brands today as I did at the start of my career. There are some really interesting inflection points of creativity and technology that brands can leverage. And it's a privilege to be helping our clients navigate that.
