Exclusive: McCann Taps Havas Leader Stephanie Nerlich for Newly Created Global President Role

Stephanie Nerlich, a veteran Havas Creative leader, is assuming a new global president role at McCann Worldgroup’s McCann agency.

She’ll report to McCann Worldgroup and McCann CEO Daryl Lee and focus on new business development—especially in global markets—and on supporting McCann clients.

She’ll take on a leadership role for McCann U.S.’s Verizon account. This kind of account support can be an unusual purview for an executive, but clients can expect to see that at McCann.

This is because Lee recently developed a new leadership structure that makes more high-level resources directly available to clients. Nerlich, like other executives, will split her time between agency and account leadership. Her enthusiasm for doing this was one reason Lee found her to be the right person for the job.

“It is working with clients and helping clients get the solutions they need—but also working with McCann on the agency side—to ensure that we’re building the capabilities at scale, across all clients, that allow us to really bring brand creativity to life,” Lee told Adweek.

Creatives take on audience intelligence

The capabilities Lee referenced involve audience intelligence and data access. At the Worldgroup level, Lee is spearheading the creation of a proprietary platform, fed by Acxiom data, that parallels the ones large media agency networks now frequently use.

It is unique for a creative network to focus on this kind of proprietary data and tool development. Lee, who hails from IPG’s largest media agency UM, brought his knowledge of the audience analytics space to the creative network.

The Worldgroup network will use the tech “to receive those audience insights, and to use them for creative briefing and for creative inspiration,” Lee told Adweek.

It was important to Lee that McCann’s new global CEO come to the ad agency with an open-minded approach to creativity, and a knowledge of the impact insights can have on the creative process.

“All the richness that data provides which media agencies have access to creative agencies should have equal access to—not in order to plan media buys—which is very important and a very good use of that data, but also to inform the creative work now, in the dream world,” said Lee.

Ramping up new business

Nerlich leaves her role as North America CEO of Havas, and global chief client officer for the Havas Creative Group. Under her leadership, Havas North America ramped up new business and took top awards at Cannes and at the Effies.

“I am thrilled to join McCann as Global President,” Nerlich said in a statement shared with Adweek. “It’s rare that an opportunity with such a celebrated agency comes along, particularly one that can deliver industry-leading creativity that solves business problems for such an enviable roster of clients,” she continued.

The IPG agency is also fresh off a successful Cannes awards season, in which it ranked in the top five networks and received awards for its Mastercard and Microsoft work. The IPG agency recently won the TJ Maxx, Reckitt’s Durex and Air India accounts.

Nerlich’s appointment follows leadership changes at Worldgroup earlier this year. Those changes resulted in Lee’s appointment and in several MRM and Futurebrand leaders ascending to new roles at the Worldgroup level, pointing to the network’s greater emphasis on group-level structure and resources.

“What’s been happening at McCann, which of course has been happening across the ad agency landscape, is a transformation of capability and of purpose,” Lee told Adweek.

McCann and its sister agencies, MRM, CRAFT and FutureBrand, work alongside the broader IPG ecosystem to execute client work. That includes frequent collaboration with agencies Momentum Worldwide, Weber Shandwick and UM, which Lee previously led.

Under Nerlich’s leadership, Lee hopes clients will provide McCann better performance reviews, that its work will receive more awards and that it’ll grow new business. Integrating the new Worldgroup audience insights technology into the creative agency’s culture, and expanding McCann’s influencer practice, are other goals.

“We would also look at the extent to which, internally, there’s comfort and expertise around audience intelligence globally,” Lee said. He’ll also keep an eye on if McCann client teams feel they have the right understanding, tools, feedback and education to incorporate those insights into their creative processes.