McCann Manchester closes city centre office and brings Metro staff back to Bonis Hall
MetroMcCann Manchester is closing its Metro office in Manchester city centre and bringing all 80 of the digital staff working there back to its Bonis Hall headquarters in Cheshire.
The Metro branding will continue to operate and the team will service its own clients and those of the main agency.
But McCanns has exercised a break clause in its lease agreement which means it can serve notice on its premises in Basil Chambers in the Northern Quarter.
In a statement the agency said it had taken this decision "on the back of a number of large integrated accounts that require much closer collaboration between the digital specialists and the agency’s account teams".
It continued: "The move has been undertaken to help the agency drive towards it five year target of having around half of its revenue being derived from digital work. At present digitally based revenues are running at more than one third of total revenues."
McCanns said "a secondary factor" was that the Basil Chambers office did not allow for further expansion without staff being broken up and split across different floors of the building.
Without making use of the break clause the agency would have been committed to Basil Chambers for nearly three further years.
Chief executive Sue Little said: "Nearly three years ago we set up Metro on a separate site as an innovation hub, with a view to incubating and growing the operation. This has been an unprecedented success with the Metro team handling high profile work for a mix of its own clients as well as servicing McCann Manchester and McCann Worldgroup clients.
“The changes to how clients view digital in the past three years have been seismic and now we have incubated a successful business, we have taken the decision to bring it back to Bonis to drive closer digital integration for all of our clients.”
Metro opened in January 2009 and has since handled work for McCann Manchester and McCann Worldgroup clients American Airlines, London 2012, Holiday Inn and Welcome to Yorkshire.
It has also picked up its own accounts with C&A, The Carbon Trust and October Films.
Little added: "One of the other reasons for launching Metro was to establish us as a digital specialist in our own right to enable us to attract a wider pool of digital talent to McCann and also to secure work that had digital at its heart as opposed to being one element of a wider campaign.
“Metro has met both of these objectives, has been a commercial success and secured numerous clients and projects and we look forward to building on this success and having all of our digital resource under one roof.”
Staff have been informed of the plans and will be relocated to Bonis Hall on a staged basis between now and the end of the year.
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80? More like 8 digital staff after the latest redundancies. This is a completely untrue.
A break clause?
A commercial success?? The simple fact that we have enough space at Bonis Hall to fit in another 80 people suggests otherwise. But let's all pretend it's for closer collaboration because communication has always been our strongest asset. Looking on the bright side, somebody at Metro might actually use the pool.
Basil Chambers office did not allow for further expansion without staff being broken up and split across different floors of the building? So when and where is this new open plan office going up at Bonis to fit these "80" (cough 20 at most) digital staff?
PR Fail, must try harder Jim ;)
Come on Sue why not rewrite this without the spin and show your Digital / Social Media prowess.
It's a good job they didn't spend £200,000 on kitting out the Basil office only to move back to empty Bonis........oh, bugger!
Actually, November cull is just around the corner so nothing to see here!!
80 staff? Are they avin a bubble bath? 8 at most
“We deliberately chose the Northern Quarter because we were keen to create something new and different and wanted to avoid simply replicating the offering at Bonis Hall.
oops
City working isn't all it's cracked up to be, bring on the vegetable growing competitions at Bonis :|
failblog.org/
Seth is going to be well pissed "/
No-one believes any of this nonsense. It wasn't set up as an innovation hub, it became one (in name) when it failed as a digital agency. It failed as a digital agency because no-one there, least of all the organ grinder, understands what digital is or how to integrate it. Bonis Hall has shrunk from 300+ to less than 200, anyone who's been to Bonis recently and seen the tumbleweed blowing around knows why Metro is no more. Let's hope the decline continues. Ding ding, all aboard the Digibus...
The won 3 of their own clients in 3 years!
That say's it all.
Best spin of the decade award goes to:
...Basil Chambers office did not allow for further expansion without staff being broken up and split across different floors of the building.
Can you image an office having to be split onto different floors?
The horror!
How would they cope?
Comedy classic "Mutiny on the Digital Buses' followed by "Extended Holiday on the Digital Buses"
"I'll get you.....de dee de"
Sad reading indeed. The fact that there are so many McCann beaters just shows how badly they got it wrong. Worst still is all the people it damaged and disheartened along the way. They were the people who really Paid for the adventures at Metro and Bonis. Thankfully Sue and her followers will not suffer.
There are so many lovely people there that do actually care and are good at what they do but are being lead to the harbour by a blind captain with a rusty boat.
Time for a change at the top, not changes at the bottom!
Poor Seth, back to the cupboard with you...
Is this really news?!? Really?!? How small minded and regional are you if you think it is? Why in fact do we feel the need to have such a smalltime rag?!?!
Oh that's right. It's because everyone's egos in this industry are so fat that they pretend advertising is really important.
I'm off to read that curry menu that was posted through the other day.
Ditto Fri 30 Sep 2011 15:59:
'Time for a change at the top, not changes at the bottom!'
Whoever is driving the 'digibus' isn't using the rear view mirror to see the carnage they've caused....
Having worked in both the Metro and Bonis ghost towns its a far cry from the innovation hub they proclaim. Its an ego driven wash of old school radio and paper led thinkers who probably think Zuckerberg is a Jewish burger joint.
If Sue is deluded enough to believe the words on this blog they are in more trouble than we thought!
What a joke!
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