A renewed focus on trust is the key to cutting through in today’s fragmented media landscape, according to the Managing Directors of newly formed creative agency VCCP Roar.
Bearing the tagline “Disruptors of Influence”, Roar was formed from three specialist agencies within the parent VCCP – Teamspirit in financial services, Harvard in technology, PR and marketing and Good Relations in consumer and corporate. Owner VCCP had realised how many capabilities there were across the group and wanted to bring them together into one agency offering.
Co-founder and co-MD Jo Preston (pictured, third from left) emphasises that this is a “growth play” rather than cost-cutting consolidation.
“People ask why we didn’t do it two or three years ago,” adds Adam Smith, (pictured, second from left), also co-founder and Managing Director. “The reality is influence is no longer just advertising, creative or PR. It could be Reddit, LLMs, search, or anything that shapes what people consume. If you bring all those capabilities together, you can respond to that from every angle.”
The point around fragmentation is an important one. Formerly dominant mass media channels such as television are waning. Now brands are visible across a series of distributed touchpoints that are accessed through video on demand, social media and increasingly through ChatGPT (the “rule of seven” argues that a customer needs to see a company in seven places before their buying decision is influenced).
Whether it is AI or TikTok, the trends that are disrupting marketing may seem disparate and chaotic, but VCCP Roar is betting that this will drive a greater-than-ever demand for authority and trust.
“There’s more content than ever, and brands can generate their own in ways they couldn’t five or ten years ago,” says Jo. “Owned and paid ecosystems are moving closer together. But there’s also a huge amount of content you can’t trust, particularly in regulated sectors.”
The argument, then, is that a consistent story needs to be developed centrally, but then deployed across these disparate channels. Multiple specialised agencies are much harder to align.
“They don’t always sing from the same song sheet,” Adam says.
The breadth of the agency’s offering will allow it to react at the pace that is required, scaling up different channels when required.
“You don’t necessarily need all of this to be always on,” says Jo. “And I think that’s kind of important because part of our job is to be a genuine consultant to your client and to give them completely fair advice in terms of what they need at that particular point in their journey. I think the fact that we can be really honest about that is a positive as well.”
This role as strategic consultants is another key part of the pitch. VCCP Roar launches in an era where the assets that agencies used to build their billing on are becoming commoditised: copy and graphics used to be the preserve of specialists, but can now be produced (with questionable quality) by putting prompts into LLMs like ChatGPT.
“People buy people…people want a consultant, they want candour,” says Adam. “They want to be disagreed with as much as they do want to be agreed with.
“A lot of people think AI is going to take people’s jobs at the bottom of the hierarchy. But what it means is you can supercharge them into being consultants quicker.”
So what does VCCP Roar want to accomplish in its first year? Aside from commercial targets, Jo says the immediate goal is to make sure that it continues to be known for the same things as the predecessor agencies, including retaining Teamspirit’s reputation as financial services specialists.
“[We’re] very conscious that when you bring three specialist agencies together, you could just think you’ve got this one generalist entity,” says Adam. “And that’s absolutely not the case. So we just need to do a good job on making sure everyone is very aware of that.”
But ultimately, however it is structured, the agency needs to prove itself with results.
“We want to grow a brilliant agency and that means a brilliant culture,” Jo adds. “That means being recognised by clients for doing great work.”
