Score: 6
Last year: 7
How the agency rates itself: 7
Three big reviews by Ikea, 21st Century Fox and BMW hung over much of 2016 and the fact that Vizeum ended up losing the last two was a double-whammy before Christmas. Fox alone was worth £26m in billings and BMW nearly as much.
However, retaining Ikea, one of the agency’s top three spenders, boosted morale and winning the TSB account was another important move. Vizeum teamed up with content publisher John Brown and search agency 360i as part of an integrated play by parent company Dentsu Aegis Network to land TSB and, if they can make the partnership work, it will open up further possibilities with other clients.
Smaller wins included E.ON (another joint effort with 360i and branded content division The Story Lab), Cineworld, The Economist and Abel & Cole. Vizeum also did well "upselling" services to existing clients (deepening its relationship with William Hill by winning its digital and programmatic business) and the agency’s total billings grew 19% (the quickest growth of any media agency in the top ten).
However, Jem Lloyd-Williams, who took over as managing director after Richard Morris moved to a group role, knows he needs to breathe new life into the agency given the recent big account losses. He brings an outsider’s experience after an eight-year spell at MediaCom but so far has done only some modest shuffling of his management team, recruiting Kirsti Wenn from trading arm Amplifi and promoting Tim Jones.
Vizeum has shown it is capable of big ideas (helping Camelot to become the first advertiser to take over Clear Channel’s entire digital estate to celebrate the 347 millionaires it made in 2016) and has a heart (the agency’s bursary fund paid for more than 20 staff to do courses, including coding, novel-writing and stand-up comedy). Vizeum’s strength in entertainment should give the agency hope that it can fill the gap left by Fox.
How the agency describes its year in a tweet
Deepening relationships with brilliant clients helped make a successful year, with TSB, E.ON and The Economist on board too. All set for ’17
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