Adweek: What’s it like to run an entire agency dedicated to one client—McDonald’s—after holding more traditional account roles?
Brian Nienhaus: For me it’s been very exciting, which doesn’t mean there aren’t moments when you want to bang your head on the wall a little bit. But it’s very heartening to see that what was just PowerPoints and some innovative ideas one year ago has really come to life in the people we’re hiring, the structure we’re building, the tech that we’re investing in and the process we’re implementing in the agency.
There was a lot of debate about performance-based stipulations in the McDonald’s contract after WPP dropped out of the review.
There was an [Omnicom CEO] John Wren quote from some of the earliest meetings: “We don’t take on clients that we don’t make money on.” Our goals are very well aligned with McDonald’s goals: As its U.S. business does well, we do well. I think it’s a really smart and progressive approach … My KPIs are very similar to [CMO] Deborah Wahl’s.
Can you explain Unlimited’s “Cortex” unit for the layman?
It’s a collaborative, data-informed strategy team [with] about 34 members. The goal is for us to have the most complete and dynamic view of the McDonald’s customer and segment ever assembled … We will have the rigor of a CPG six-month cycle, but we’ll do it at the speed of McDonald’s.
