Score: 4
Last year: 5
How the agency rates itself: 6
Cheil London has struggled to establish its USP in recent years. 2016 brought more upheaval at the top – with group chief executive Paul Hammersley leaving after just 13 months – but also some reasons to be optimistic.
Staff numbers fell 22% over the year, and that was on top of losing almost a fifth of employees in both 2014 and 2015. Even if some of the decline in 2016 can be attributed to changes in how Cheil’s global teams are accounted for, the comparisons do not look good. Likewise, declared income was £15.1m in 2015, down from £16.8m in 2014, and is thought to have fallen further last year.
That said, Cheil should be rightly proud of picking up the Etihad Airways account in November, even if previous incumbent M&C Saatchi United Arab Emirates tried to spin the move as the airline retrenching into tactical campaigns. Adding global advertising to the digital and social brief Cheil won from Etihad in September was a coup and demonstrated the agency’s ability to go up against the big boys.
Etihad released its first ad by Cheil on Boxing Day – putting paid to the idea that it was moving away from brand-building. Other highlights in 2016 included bringing a choir from around the world together to sing carols at Piccadilly Circus – complete with visualisations created with data collected by Samsung smart watches on the singers’ wrists – and helping the Women’s Equality Party reclaim the streets in the "#WEcount" campaign, although the latter appointed Now as its retained agency this month.
With another new management line-up, and with respected integrated executive creative director Caitlin Ryan now settled in, Cheil will be hoping 2017 is the year the narrative changes. The recent departure of chief growth officer Cat Davis suggests possibly not.
How the agency describes its year in a tweet
The year of ‘all change’. But we’re stronger for it. Excited to step it up a gear in 2017.
Score key: 9 Outstanding 8 Excellent 7 Good 6 Satisfactory 5 Adequate 4 Below average 3 Poor 2 A year to forget 1 Survival in question