M&C Saatchi Performance has appointed Chris Steedman APAC managing director. The announcement: Highly regarded mobile marketing specialist Chris Steedman has relocated from M&C Saatchi Performance’s London HQ to Sydney to drive the business into Australia and Asia Pacific.
Steedman brings a wealth of experience to the newly created role of Managing Director Asia Pacific, M&C Saatchi Performance.
He will head up the operation which has been building momentum since its launch in October 2012 by providing specialist mobile advertising strategy for the likes of David Jones and Masters.
A founding executive of M&C Saatchi Performance in 2008, Steedman was instrumental in the growth of the business which has expanded out of London to a global offering with offices in Sydney, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Cape Town and Johannesburg.
He is excited by the enormous potential for mobile marketing in this part of the world, evidenced by the massive take up of web-enabled mobile devices.
“Just talking about Australia, there’s a huge smart phone and tablet penetration here but mobile marketing spend still lags far behind the eyeballs,” Steedman said.
“Mobile is increasingly the 1st screen, not the 3rd screen and marketers here are slowly coming around to that. Off a low base, mobile adspend nearly doubled in 2012 from $44m to $86.2m.
“Despite the forecast for similar explosive growth, mobile still represents a mere fraction of total adspend, it should be much higher.”
The reasons why it is not are a combination of relatively high costs of mobile media in Australia and strategy and execution that is less than optimal, he said.
“I think poor strategy and execution are caused largely by the fact there are few businesses in Australia that specialise in mobile advertising and media. In many instances mobile is done by traditional agencies who merely tack it on to their offer.
“Poor planning and execution leads to poor results which don’t endear marketers to commit future adspend to mobile, so it becomes a rather unvirtuous cycle,” Steedman said. M&C Saatchi Performance Australia’s offer is unique. An end-to-end service that incorporates mobile strategy, planning, buying, tracking, optimisation and reporting with the vast production and creative resources of both its and the M&C Saatchi global network.M&C Saatchi Performance Australia operates within the M&C Saatchi Australia Group of companies.
M&C Saatchi Australasia CEO Jaimes Leggett said mobile and tablet consumption is an area of “enormous marketing growth in Australia”.
“It is imperative for us to have a specialised, experienced presence in such a dynamic sector. M&C Saatchi Performance under Chris is ideally placed to leverage the fantastic opportunities on offer for brand owners”.
