Happy Birthday, MEC Switzerland!

WW: Sandro Prezzi, we're sitting here in a beautifully furnished room with all kinds of consumer electronics equipment. Is this your office?
Sandro Prezzi: No (laughs). This is our media lounge. It used to be our accountant's office, which we converted into a multifunctional room. We've always needed an additional conference room, but we wanted something special. A room where you can sit and talk to customers or employees in a more informal setting. Outside of these meetings, it can be used freely by employees, who should feel comfortable. Enjoy the latest episode of your favorite series with video on demand on the 3D LED screen during your lunch break. Or replay yesterday's game on the PS3 with the FIFA European Championship soccer game. If it takes longer in the evening (because of a pitch, for example), we also enjoy a pizza here. In addition to being a technology lab, the room is also a retreat where employees can find peace and quiet. This helps the working atmosphere and promotes an understanding of how to use the latest entertainment technology.

Since February, you have been responsible for MEC Switzerland and thus also for the two locations in Zurich and Lausanne....
That is correct. As part of the new organizational structure, I have assumed responsibility as Managing Director of MEC in Switzerland and, together with Myrtha Hafner (MEC Zurich), Vera Presas (MEC Lausanne) and Huw Jones (Global Solutions), I manage the Swiss agencies and the Global Solution special unit (service for internationally active Swiss companies). A total of around 40 employees work at MEC Switzerland. Strategically, I am supported in my role by our Chairman, Konrad Mayr-Pernek, Managing Director of MEC in Austria.

MEC is part of GroupM. What is GroupM?
GroupM is the consolidated media investment management company of WPP, which as the parent company supports the agencies MEC, Maxus, MediaCom and Mindshare. The main purpose of GroupM is to maximize the performance of WPP's media agencies for the benefit of our clients, our shareholders and our employees. Maximizing in the sense of performance-enhancing activities in the areas of digital, finance, research, trading, administration and IT. The focus is on the intelligent application of physical and intellectual economies of scale for the benefit of clients. GroupM also develops initiatives that establish media agencies at the forefront of the industry and further enhance their global, regional and national reputation as a creative force in the market. GroupM develops market analysis, benchmarking systems and market simulations to ensure the best possible strategies and results for our clients. It also promotes investment in new technologies, tools, systems and methods to strengthen the Group's innovative power and influence on the Swiss media market.

How are Swiss media agencies doing?
Even if some colleagues are constantly complaining about prices, fees and staffing problems, things aren't so bad. Of course there are always customers who want to pay even less, and there will always be. These cost optimizers use the media agencies as leverage - some even as crowbars - to push down prices at the media companies. Consequently, they usually have the same attitude towards agency fees. One of the basic problems is getting paid decently for comprehensive services. Despite state-of-the-art systems and tools, the work of a media agency is very time-consuming. The rapid change in the media landscape requires know-how, perseverance and still means a lot of manual work. Getting this paid in full by the client means persuasion and transparency. However, this also requires appropriate agency structures. MEC is rarely the absolute cheapest in pitches. Instead, we offer full transparency and probably one of the best price/performance ratios across the board. It is important that we can show the client the added value. Unfortunately, this is exactly what you normally do last in an agency's daily business. We have already defended clients in a pitch, even though our fee was significantly higher in direct comparison. We were able to give the client the confidence that the quality of the advice, our knowledge of them and their brand and their challenges, and the added value of our MEC tools would be correspondingly higher. Any business-minded person knows that fees that are too low mean that the best people are not working on the job. In most cases, the client does not get a senior strategist with 15 to 20 years of market experience and an army of experienced and well-trained planners for a 2 percent fee. The client largely defines the quality of advice himself with his fee. I would like to refer here to the BSW guidelines, which suggest a fee of 5 percent for a medium budget. Very large budgets should be compensated with no less than 3 percent and small budgets with 10 percent. As we know, this is unfortunately still a long way from reality.

What are you particularly proud of?
Of course, we are delighted with every pitch in which we were able to convince and win. One of the biggest pitches we won here in Zurich was for the global budget of the Swiss brand Geberit. We manage and coordinate 19 countries and markets from Zurich. The same applies to ABB and Adobe, for which we plan and implement campaigns worldwide from here. We are proud of the fact that we have a large number of long-standing customers who have remained loyal to us and with whom we have grown over the years. This is no longer a matter of course in the fast-moving marketing and advertising industry. I am also pleased with the performance of our Digital Unit - MEC Interaction. This team has had its nose in the wind for years. MEC Interaction makes very smart use of the close networking within MEC worldwide and the size of GroupM to recognize new trends early on and implement them immediately in campaigns for our Swiss customers. We invested consistently in social media back in 2009 and have built up a small team over the last two and a half years. As part of MEC Interaction, the social media team can now plan and implement appropriate strategies, networking concepts, promotions and campaigns, drawing on its well-established contacts with the most important social media providers such as Facebook. Over the last 12 months, our unit has planned, booked, optimized and monitored over one billion ad impressions on Facebook in Switzerland.

What comes next?
2012 is a year of consolidation and reorganization for us. We have consistently aligned our team structures to the needs of integrated communication and integrated planning. This means that the specialists in the specialist units have been integrated directly into the customer support teams. This allows us to ensure that the full specialist and channel expertise is applied from briefing to invoicing. This makes the smart integration of digital media easier and has a positive impact on media strategies that orchestrate paid, owned and earned media more effectively. In order to implement this even better, we will continue to invest in research (advertising efficiency, touchpoints, media convergence), tools (improved benchmarking, tracking and dashboards) and the further expansion of expertise in digital and mobile media.

Interview: Pierre C. Meier