Profile: MediaCom APAC CEO Alex Crowther

Alex Crowther, the recently appointed CEO of MediaCom Asia-Pacific was looking forward to a well-earned break. “My goal was to take some time off,” says the former president and CEO, Americas and Australia, of start-up agency DAVINCI Selectwork. “I had romantic notions of running into the sunset, then I got a phone call, took a reality check and I got sucked in.”

And a quiet time is not what lies ahead. Crowther will continue the work of his predecessor Kevin Clark, but takes on the role with a fresh pair of eyes and two objectives - firstly to deliver excellence to existing clients and secondly to achieve absolute growth. “This is the brief I have given myself,” he confesses.

Asked how he feels about returning to a ‘traditional’ agency, Crowther explains that, while Omnicom-owned DAVINCI was a start up, he wouldn’t say it was non-traditional.

“We worked with many large clients and operated in much the same way we do at MediaCom. The challenges with a start-up are accessing resource and acquiring systems and tools. Naturally, MediaCom and GroupM have all of these needs covered. MediaCom is a very entrepreneurial company and the regional and worldwide boards are very hands on. MediaCom is perhaps the non-traditional one.”

But balancing his experiences of the corporate cultures of US-owned Omnicom with British-run GroupM, could well be interesting, although not entirely unnatural for Crowther, who is British born but with a heavily US accented resume. Diplomatic in his response, he says, “We all live in a world where we are accountable to our management and shareholders and at the end of the day regardless of holding company affiliation there will always be targets to meet and results to deliver.

MediaCom and GroupM allow its senior team to drive the business with entrepreneurial spirit - and critically we are able to make decisions fast. My focus is on growth and delivery, MediaCom and GroupM empower you to do that.”

But MediaCom’s corporate culture is something Crowther is sold on. “It’s the reason I took the job he says - MediaCom’s people first approach, it believes in managing people. It didn’t matter whether I walked into MediaCom in New York, in London or any of it’s Asian offices.”

A question frequently raised is the dynamics of the group and how MediaCom fits into the GroupM family. Crowther laughs and turns the question on its head. “You answered it in your question,” he says. “We are a family and we act like one. Really. A cohesive group of companies with independent identities. We work as partners where it makes a difference and we leverage volume all with the single goal of benefiting the group’s clients. We have depth and breadth of resource and it works.”

So how, then, does MediaCom differ from Mindshare in the region? Crowther says first and foremost MediaCom is a bit younger than Mindshare in the Asia Pacific so the agency could be seen as a “challenger” in some markets, but in others, like Australia, MediaCom is the dominant force.

“We obviously have our own culture and identity as mentioned before but we really don’t compare ourselves like this because we are focused on MediaCom, our delivery, client satisfaction and growth,” he adds.

Crowther’s remit is vast and covers the whole of Asia-Pacific. He says naturally China, Australia and India are all key countries where MediaCom is experiencing solid growth - citing winning ABInBev in China and Yum foods in Australia as good recent examples.

“We don’t have any holes on the APAC map and as such my focus is the entire region and it’s growth. As a group, we have very significant scale and record 30 per cent plus share everywhere.”

At the beginning of the year, MediaCom in Australia said it was shifting the focus of its business from buying to strategy, a move it emphasised was not a tweak but a real transformation. 

So is this a region-wide model for MediaCom? Crowther says he think the Australian message was slightly misunderstood. “What they’re saying is that as part of GroupM we have the buying power, so let’s focus on making a difference for our clients through strong strategic planning and a better understanding of our client’s business and consumers.”

Strategy is clearly very important and is a heavy focus in Australia and across the region. “But you can’t win any piece of business on strategy alone as the differentiator,“ says Crowther. “Buying power, performance and delivery are key and always will be.”

MediaCom is also making a strong case against the current trend of media pitches being called on price alone. The agency last year decided not to even contest Nokia’s US$415 million global media review, arguing that it was simply offering too little to make holding the account worthwhile. But was this a wise move for Mediacom? Is any fee better than no fee? Crowther whole-heatedly supports the group’s decision.

“It was absolutely the right decision and I am proud that MediaCom had the conviction to make the right, albeit hard, decision. The choices some [networks] make are to take a fee at any cost and under deliver - we will not do this. Every single piece of business will be fairly compensated and every single client will get a best in class media product and service level. If it happened today, we would do exactly the same thing.”

Alex Crowther CV

2010 CEO MediaCom, Asia-Pacific, Singapore
2003 President/CEO Americas & Australia, DAVINCI Selectwork, Michigan, US
1999 Regional director, Chrysler Asia-Pacific Operations, Bozell Worldwide/FCB, Singapore & Tokyo