Let me declare my love right now. I love CIA. This company is a
journalist’s dream. Over the years no other UK media agency has provided
so many interesting headlines: takeovers, mergers, joint ventures,
start-ups, rows, dubious airtime dealings, political in-fighting,
departures, even the odd hiring, and, of course, plenty of accounts won
and lost.
So when Mike Elms, the chief executive of CIA’s UK interests for the
past five years, insists ’there’s always been continuity here’, it
sounds a little disingenuous.
Turbulence at CIA? Oh no, no, no. The CIA which in recent years has
suffered the departure of a spectrum of key executives from UK group
companies, which took a bath to the tune of pounds 600,000 on the
acquisition of Mansfield Lang, which lost pounds 1.8 million in a TV
trading dispute last year, and which has seen its chairman, Chris
Ingram, complain that the UK performance left something to be desired in
the latest profits figures. No more turbulence than any other UK media
company, Elms claims.
When Mike Tunnicliffe quit as managing director of CIA Medianetwork last
week (reportedly losing out after giving CIA chiefs a ’him (Elms) or me’
ultimatum), Elms decided to combine his group role with the running of
the flagship brand, amid bets as to his own length of tenure in the post
(Campaign, 3 October).
A year ago, Elms’s role extended to Europe, then he was pulled back to
concentrate on the UK group. Now his primary task will be the
Medianetwork operation. Regression? No, focus, he insists. ’We’d
stretched our UK management into pan-European responsibilities and
no-one was giving the UK 150 per cent. But as the core brand,
Medianetwork is the biggest lever to pull as far as the products,
services and profits of our European development are concerned. Now I
want to get my hands on that lever.’
David Reich, the chief executive of CIA plc, gives Elms his full
backing.
’Mike’s the sort of guy who relishes the cut and thrust, he’s a team
player and I honestly think we’ll now see Medianetwork thrusting
ahead.’
Elms was once a media hotshot, working his way through the ranks at
Ogilvy & Mather to become media director then managing director of the
agency.
Then he had a bad accident playing rugby and nearly died. It was, say
those who knew him, a turning point. He became more sober (literally,
giving up alcohol) and lost some spark. In 1992, he was deposed from O&M
and joined CIA as its UK group chief executive at the beginning of 1993
and became the vision behind CIA’s UK strategy.
Elms, who despite being the physical embodiment of the colour grey, is
only 43, talks a lot of sense. He talks about the opportunities for
strategic planning, database marketing, new media, about his vision for
a full-service media offering.
It’s a vision he’s articulated for years, and one which other companies
are now embracing. It’s even a vision CIA had the resource and
determination to tackle. But it’s a vision which CIA has never truly
pulled off.
Take CIA Conzept - a strategic planning service whose inception and
positioning was something of a masterstroke but which was left in
tatters when its management were poached earlier this year to set up a
similar operation for J. Walter Thompson. Rather than apportion (or
accept) blame, Elms believes Conzept was a step too far too soon. ’We’re
still seen in many ways as a buying shop and we’ve got to get to the
point where our clients would naturally accept that we have that sort of
service.’
Hence his decision now to bring this full-service proposition right into
the heartland of the Medianetwork brand while kicking off a search for a
top-class marketer to help with its positioning.
But Elms, who has been out of the media scrum for some time, is no
obvious white knight. Ask a media owner or two about him and his name
does not automatically elicit words of respect. And while Tunnicliffe
may have been lacking vision (and perhaps respect), he made up for it
with a solid trading background and a camaraderie with both media owners
and a number of senior clients - qualities which Elms, nice guy as he
is, must now work hard at.
Bizarrely enough, if he gets it wrong Elms will have his deputy at UK
group level, Roger Powley, to answer to. Powley, who is soon to join
from Carat as managing director of the UK interests, will also be Elms’s
boss as far as the performance of Medianetwork is concerned. A bemused
Powley asked: ’Does this mean I can beat you up on some Medianetwork
things?’, to which Elms replied: ’Absolutely right it does.’ Here’s to
more great headlines.
The Elms file
1973 Ogilvy & Mather, media trainee
1977 O&M, head of media planning
1981 O&M, media director
1989 O&M, managing director
1993 CIA UK Holdings, chief executive
1997 CIA Medianetwork, chief executive
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