McCann aims to promote investment in social platforms

Social Central, launched two months ago, is a multi-faceted initiative aimed sharing best practice across the McCann network, improving client understanding of social media, measuring ROI and ultimately helping to increase investment in the social space.

Nick Handel, managing director for MRM Singapore and regional digital director for McCann, said Social Central does not operate as a separate agency. Rather it seeks to connect existing talent in social media across the region and across all McCann brands.
 
“We recognised that we had pockets of brilliance all over the place but we weren’t necessarily harnessing them in the best way,” Handel said. “The idea [of Social Central] is to re-bundle our existing resources that might sit in McCann, MRM and Momentum… so we can talk collectively on social for all our different clients.”
 
Handel said the impetus behind the initiative was the feeling that social was a “little bit of a Wild West”, and despite the buzz many clients were still not using social media effectively.

He added that a challenge for agencies is persuading clients to invest more in social media as the current benchmark for investment is “at the intern level”.

“A lot of clients leapt into this space without actually the discipline about what are we measuring and why,” Handel said. “They couldn’t measure digital; they could see all the data but that’s not the same as measurement and its not as meaningful.”
 
In light of this, Social Central is working to create an “earned media attribution model” to put a dollar valuation on activity in the social space, such as Facebooks 'likes' and 'shares'.
 
He said, “Part of the challenge for agencies is not only to have the pointy headed individuals that drive business for us but also translators that can contextualise this data into something that is meaningful and understandable by marketers.”
  
Handel said McCann is increasingly placing responsibility for client community management in the hands of account management team.

He said this approach works as the account management understands the brand better than anybody else and as a result can tell the brand story effectively.

He added that taking this approach will also provide long-term benefits in terms of the future digital expertise of the network. 

"If our young account management are all going to be in indoctrinated into community management at the coal face in two to three years time you have mid-management and future leaders of an agency that are completely digitised," he said.