Following our recent feature City Brand Leaders – Manchester, we interviewed a select group of leaders from Manchester’s top agencies to help focus on the Manchester brand and consider their own agency vision.
Creativebrief Founder & Chairman Tom Holmes talks to Mick Style, Managing Director of MEC Manchester.
Mick Style, MEC Manchester
Mick previously worked at CIA Manchester where he rose to Broadcast Director and took the MD role at MEC Manchester in 2003. Under his tenure, MEC has grown to 60 people in Manchester, accelerating its digital and search marketing capabilities and names Lloyds Banking Group, PZ Cussons, Shearings Group, Dr Oetker and Seven Seas amongst its clients. Mick has led MEC to win five Agency of the Year accolades over the last three years including winning How-Do’s Media Agency of the Year three times. Mick attributes the agency’s success to matching the agency’s push in new business, and into digital in particular, with excellence in client service.
TH: Mick, what does the Manchester brand stand for?
MS: The UK (OK, England then) is a lot more obsessed around its capital in its political, economic and business leadership than most of our European neighbours. This is driven from London in every sector and just isn’t healthy for a nation in a bit of a fix and desperate to drive economic growth, jobs and opportunity right the way from the fishing fleets of Cornwall to the website builders (yes, really) in Shetland.
So how does Manchester fit into all of this? Manchester is accepted as England’s ‘second city’ (get over it Brummies : ) ) and I think there is a Manchester brand and for me it stands for not settling for second best. It has a certain swagger as it walks down Deansgate, it has a great sense of humour that guards against an inflated ego but most importantly it has integrity and the ability to deliver at its heart.
We get this positive and challenging attitude from living and working in this great city, right here, right now, and we don’t need to rely on past glories of the industrial revolution, an amazing musical heritage, the best football teams, Europe’s largest density of students etc. even though these define our city.
TH: Are the city’s brand values reflected in your own agency culture?
MS: Our agency has a strong culture that, to be fair, is derived more from MEC than our location. Our people talk about something which is hard to put a finger on, a certain ‘MEC-ness,’ which is encapsulated in our four behaviours (brave, insatiable, respectful and dynamic) and applies to how we behave with each other, our business partners and our clients. We’re incredibly proud of MEC and becoming the highest ranked agency in the Sunday Times Best 100 Companies To Work For 2012 showed how far we’ve come as a business.
That said, I run the Manchester office of MEC and I’m proud of MEC and proud of running a successful business in Manchester offering services to clients right across the UK. I can see exciting times ahead, not settling for second best, in this city in media and digital services, and in the broad sector of marketing communications.
TH: Does being based in Manchester influence your creative output? If so, how?
MS: Our creative output is the creative insight in our connection ideas, our award winning digital work for clients, creating business value from data, our collaborative approach with media owners, our relentless push for inspiring ideas, and not settling for second best.
Our talent is our most valuable resource and all our team have an ‘Inspiration Fund’ which pays for out-of-work ‘inspiring stuff’ that our people want to see, listen, watch, engage, try, learn, taste, test and smell.
Mick Style, MEC Manchester
So the streets, theatres, parks, galleries, venues, universities and stadia of Manchester influence us every day.
TH: What makes your agency offer different?
MS: A new business structure which organises our teams around our clients’ requirements enabling us to all to accelerate our digital knowledge and deliver better work to clients.
TH: Why should clients consider sourcing work from Manchester agencies?
MS: We have developed strong digital capabilities here in Manchester, especially in search marketing and we hub all MEC UK’s SEO services in Manchester so we have market leading strength in this growing sector; in media buying where price is of paramount importance, MEC is part of the UK’s biggest media buyer, GroupM, so we compete strongly in value with anyone and guarantee senior personnel on our clients’ business. We’re also breaking the tired paradigm of ‘all the good media men are in London’ as more overseas clients hub their UK media activity through Manchester.
TH: What sort of clients do you particularly want to attract?
MS: Clients wanting a senior agency team who want to understand their business, consumers and routes to market and using this insight are able to plan inspiring digital and media in order to deliver exceptional results.
TH: What work have you done recently makes you really proud?
MS: Our recent work for Vimto, Activision and Lloyds Banking Group have all won national recognition.
TH: What business would you most like to win?
MS: At the time of writing, we’re waiting to hear the result of a long and tough pitch process against London media agencies and I would love MEC to win – the team are passionate about the brands, we would do a great job and we would beat some strong London competition!
TH: Thanks Mick!
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