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Interview:“Even Established Agencies Need To Remember To Hustle”
(MENAFN- PRovoke)
Former MSL London group CEO Chris McCafferty left the agency in April this year after four years. McCafferty founded Karmarama's PR agency, Kaper, in 2010, and was part of the team that
sold the Karmarama business , spanning brand strategy, advertising and mobile as well as PR and Social, to Accenture in 2016. Before joining MSL in 2019 he was managing director of Accenture Interactive's Experience Agency, and was previously a director at Shine Communications and head of PR and corporate affairs at MSN. McCafferty sat down with PRovoke media to talk about his new advisory business, and what he's learned since leaving MSL owner Publicis.
Chris, you've been very quiet! What have you been up to since you left MSL?
When I left Publicis I felt like I had three options which reflect the variety of experiences I've had. Option one was to get another CEO job, perhaps for a network. Option two was to start another agency and use everything I've learned in the 15 years since I launched Kaper. Option three was to look at a portfolio of entrepreneurial opportunities to allow me to use all the perspectives I've gathered over my career. I was determined to go where I felt there was demand, and it was clear very quickly that the market was most interested in the strategic advice I'm able to give. This led me to launching Chapter 2 in October, a strategic advisory business where I am helping clients to write a successful next chapter.
Are all your new clients in the PR industry?
No, which is interesting. Half are PR agencies, which I'm very happy with as it's still an industry I love, but I'm equally happy that the other half of my portfolio are in the broader marketing services, creative and employer brand space. The biggest client I'm working with is a $3 billion business, and the smallest is a £3 million agency, and I like that variety. It's amazing what big people can learn from small companies, as well as vice versa.
What have you learned about yourself in the past few months as you developed Chapter 2?
I've learned how much I respond well to“2+2=5” people and possibilities. It's an optimistic outlook, and speaks to the entrepreneur in me, which always sees potential. I love the process of finding out what the questions are, as well as what the answers are. In agency life, 95% of the time we're being asked for an answer, not finding the questions, so it's an interesting shift. Clients aren't looking to me for an immediate answer, it's often nuanced, multi-faceted and explored over a period of time, as opposed to the false agency dance of having to come up with quick answers. But the biggest currency I've got is impact – my new clients are all judging me on the impact I bring, typically improvement or growth in their business, improving bottom line or operations, or helping them to expand. It all comes back to commercials, but it's not a transaction, it's about trying to build multipliers into their business.
Has anything surprised you?
I've relearned lots of things I'd forgotten, like the generosity of the industry. People so willing to help, to open up their networks, to give their advice, even to a competitor. That happened when I set up Kaper and it's happening again. People's generosity has been absolutely phenomenal. It's great and the industry is better for it; PR has always been about creating coalitions.
Is your new chapter stretching you?
A lot of what I'm doing, I did as a founder, a CEO or a senior member of the team at Accenture, but the strategic part of running a business was maybe 20% of my time; now it's 100%. It's definitely stretching me. The simplest way to think about what I'm doing is“problem or opportunity?” – if clients could solve that themselves they would, but by definition the questions are complicated. My job is to provide fresh perspectives.
In my old job I'd got very internally focused. One notable change is that my average daily steps have gone up by 25% year on year: it's an interesting metaphor for being out in the market. If I reflect on my time as a big job CEO versus my time as a founder, previously and now, you have to get out into the market and find opportunity. It's reminded me that the more established end of the market can forget how to hustle, leaders need to spend time out in the market as well as dealing with the internal machinations of large companies. Maybe every CEO should set themselves a steps KPI for 2025?
We've seen a lot of senior comms talent leave the corporate world and start their own advisory businesses in recent years, what do you make of the growing advisory sector?
It's overwhelmingly a positive thing. I can only see this with the benefit of hindsight, but when I launched Kaper I would really have benefited from having someone to advise and provide an external perspective. I also think it's part of a broader trend, where senior people can make the most of their experiences and perspectives in a more plural way – it's one way of more senior, often older people, still creating value. We've got a massive issue as an industry to make sure we're not losing all that experience and talent, but that's a broader discussion. There is huge amount of demand – there is an oversupply of agencies to clients, and you can see there is potentially an oversupply of advisors to agencies, so it's down to me to make sure I'm creating impact.
In your view, how healthy is the PR agency landscape at the moment?
We all know the market in general is challenging. You only have to look at layoffs at Edelman and elsewhere – if it's it being felt at that level, it's definitely been felt elsewhere. I'm optimistic that 2025 will be a better year than 2024, but I'm not sure it will be as positive as pre-Covid when the industry was in rude health. There will continue to be winners and losers, but the ongoing rise of influencers and the ongoing struggles of mainstream media and the macro change to where people consume content and get their news is finally having an impact on the industry; it hadn't really impacted on client buying behaviour until the past 12-24 months. And as the recent Omnicom/IPG announcement shows, further consolidation in a mature industry like marketing services is inevitable. Think about the consolidation in industries like automotive with Stellantis or Nissan and Honda, or the broadcast media in the US – there's been mega consolidation in those mature sectors and we will see more of it in marketing.
What about other evolutions, like AI?
AI is an interesting one. I'm very active in the AI space and helping to build AI products with a number of clients and I'm looking forward to launching an AI join venture in the new year – it's a huge opportunity. I do think in the PR industry, huge numbers of agencies are using AI as an efficiency tool, which is good but is missing the point – we need to use AI to fundamentally change the products we sell to clients. The temptation is to think that by deploying note-takers for meetings and automatically-written contact reports that you're in the AI space – it's a false comfort blanket and we need to challenge ourselves more than that.
What do you think the impact of AI will be on agency pricing models?
AI will further expose what has been a challenging pricing environment. We've been working on vibes-based pricing – we think it's worth this amount and will take this amount of time, and if we're lucky we'll get this result. The more I look at it now, out of the day-to-day running of an agency, I think there are margins to be made if the industry moves towards output-based or asset-based pricing – there might be a real benefit to leaning into that. AI will make outputs more efficient, and if the whole process is more efficient, outputs-based pricing might be more attractive. We could make the other choice to go much harder after demonstrating value, but the industry hasn't cracked that yet.
Finally, what's the ambition for Chapter 2?
I don't know yet if it's my intention to build a coalition of advisors and build the business like that. I'm planning on launching some joint ventures under the Chapter 2 banner, looking at specific products and services in the industry, and I can see the potential to scale as not just an advisory but also a products business. I have more thinking to do on that!
sold the Karmarama business , spanning brand strategy, advertising and mobile as well as PR and Social, to Accenture in 2016. Before joining MSL in 2019 he was managing director of Accenture Interactive's Experience Agency, and was previously a director at Shine Communications and head of PR and corporate affairs at MSN. McCafferty sat down with PRovoke media to talk about his new advisory business, and what he's learned since leaving MSL owner Publicis.
Chris, you've been very quiet! What have you been up to since you left MSL?
When I left Publicis I felt like I had three options which reflect the variety of experiences I've had. Option one was to get another CEO job, perhaps for a network. Option two was to start another agency and use everything I've learned in the 15 years since I launched Kaper. Option three was to look at a portfolio of entrepreneurial opportunities to allow me to use all the perspectives I've gathered over my career. I was determined to go where I felt there was demand, and it was clear very quickly that the market was most interested in the strategic advice I'm able to give. This led me to launching Chapter 2 in October, a strategic advisory business where I am helping clients to write a successful next chapter.
Are all your new clients in the PR industry?
No, which is interesting. Half are PR agencies, which I'm very happy with as it's still an industry I love, but I'm equally happy that the other half of my portfolio are in the broader marketing services, creative and employer brand space. The biggest client I'm working with is a $3 billion business, and the smallest is a £3 million agency, and I like that variety. It's amazing what big people can learn from small companies, as well as vice versa.
What have you learned about yourself in the past few months as you developed Chapter 2?
I've learned how much I respond well to“2+2=5” people and possibilities. It's an optimistic outlook, and speaks to the entrepreneur in me, which always sees potential. I love the process of finding out what the questions are, as well as what the answers are. In agency life, 95% of the time we're being asked for an answer, not finding the questions, so it's an interesting shift. Clients aren't looking to me for an immediate answer, it's often nuanced, multi-faceted and explored over a period of time, as opposed to the false agency dance of having to come up with quick answers. But the biggest currency I've got is impact – my new clients are all judging me on the impact I bring, typically improvement or growth in their business, improving bottom line or operations, or helping them to expand. It all comes back to commercials, but it's not a transaction, it's about trying to build multipliers into their business.
Has anything surprised you?
I've relearned lots of things I'd forgotten, like the generosity of the industry. People so willing to help, to open up their networks, to give their advice, even to a competitor. That happened when I set up Kaper and it's happening again. People's generosity has been absolutely phenomenal. It's great and the industry is better for it; PR has always been about creating coalitions.
Is your new chapter stretching you?
A lot of what I'm doing, I did as a founder, a CEO or a senior member of the team at Accenture, but the strategic part of running a business was maybe 20% of my time; now it's 100%. It's definitely stretching me. The simplest way to think about what I'm doing is“problem or opportunity?” – if clients could solve that themselves they would, but by definition the questions are complicated. My job is to provide fresh perspectives.
In my old job I'd got very internally focused. One notable change is that my average daily steps have gone up by 25% year on year: it's an interesting metaphor for being out in the market. If I reflect on my time as a big job CEO versus my time as a founder, previously and now, you have to get out into the market and find opportunity. It's reminded me that the more established end of the market can forget how to hustle, leaders need to spend time out in the market as well as dealing with the internal machinations of large companies. Maybe every CEO should set themselves a steps KPI for 2025?
We've seen a lot of senior comms talent leave the corporate world and start their own advisory businesses in recent years, what do you make of the growing advisory sector?
It's overwhelmingly a positive thing. I can only see this with the benefit of hindsight, but when I launched Kaper I would really have benefited from having someone to advise and provide an external perspective. I also think it's part of a broader trend, where senior people can make the most of their experiences and perspectives in a more plural way – it's one way of more senior, often older people, still creating value. We've got a massive issue as an industry to make sure we're not losing all that experience and talent, but that's a broader discussion. There is huge amount of demand – there is an oversupply of agencies to clients, and you can see there is potentially an oversupply of advisors to agencies, so it's down to me to make sure I'm creating impact.
In your view, how healthy is the PR agency landscape at the moment?
We all know the market in general is challenging. You only have to look at layoffs at Edelman and elsewhere – if it's it being felt at that level, it's definitely been felt elsewhere. I'm optimistic that 2025 will be a better year than 2024, but I'm not sure it will be as positive as pre-Covid when the industry was in rude health. There will continue to be winners and losers, but the ongoing rise of influencers and the ongoing struggles of mainstream media and the macro change to where people consume content and get their news is finally having an impact on the industry; it hadn't really impacted on client buying behaviour until the past 12-24 months. And as the recent Omnicom/IPG announcement shows, further consolidation in a mature industry like marketing services is inevitable. Think about the consolidation in industries like automotive with Stellantis or Nissan and Honda, or the broadcast media in the US – there's been mega consolidation in those mature sectors and we will see more of it in marketing.
What about other evolutions, like AI?
AI is an interesting one. I'm very active in the AI space and helping to build AI products with a number of clients and I'm looking forward to launching an AI join venture in the new year – it's a huge opportunity. I do think in the PR industry, huge numbers of agencies are using AI as an efficiency tool, which is good but is missing the point – we need to use AI to fundamentally change the products we sell to clients. The temptation is to think that by deploying note-takers for meetings and automatically-written contact reports that you're in the AI space – it's a false comfort blanket and we need to challenge ourselves more than that.
What do you think the impact of AI will be on agency pricing models?
AI will further expose what has been a challenging pricing environment. We've been working on vibes-based pricing – we think it's worth this amount and will take this amount of time, and if we're lucky we'll get this result. The more I look at it now, out of the day-to-day running of an agency, I think there are margins to be made if the industry moves towards output-based or asset-based pricing – there might be a real benefit to leaning into that. AI will make outputs more efficient, and if the whole process is more efficient, outputs-based pricing might be more attractive. We could make the other choice to go much harder after demonstrating value, but the industry hasn't cracked that yet.
Finally, what's the ambition for Chapter 2?
I don't know yet if it's my intention to build a coalition of advisors and build the business like that. I'm planning on launching some joint ventures under the Chapter 2 banner, looking at specific products and services in the industry, and I can see the potential to scale as not just an advisory but also a products business. I have more thinking to do on that!
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