As with last year, we’re reporting on the entire M+C Saatchi Group, not the individual agencies. It took to 2024 with a fresh tactical blueprint and a global repositioning under ‘Cultural Power’, a strategic pivot aimed at ensuring creativity becomes not just a reflection of culture, but a driver of commercial growth.

It was a year of recalibration. Structural shifts resulted in a 17 per cent reduction in headcount as the team restructured to “achieve greater agility and focus”.

It remains one of the single most important agencies in the country by virtue of its longstanding and widely celebrated work for Woolworths, CommBank and Optus, even though the telco would move its creative to Droga5 in 2025.

M+C Saatchi had several notable client losses  in 2024, including Tourism Australia, BWS, Dare Iced Coffee and Dairy Farmers. However, it did retain some portions of these accounts. For instance, while the brand strategy and creative portions of Tourism Australia moved, sections of the M+C Saatchi Group continue to work on the account.

M+C Saatchi said it continues to work with BWS on its social, PR and influencer marketing.

The new client list is solid. M+C Saatchi won MYOB and Lifeblood creative on retained bases. Its Bohemia media buying arm, which was retired in 2025, won Fever-Tree’s account in 2024.

The group also picked up creative project work for L’Oréal and the McGrath Foundation. 

These wins are not to be sniffed at in a competitive, cost-conscious market, but the agency’s loses will be sorely felt. 

Creatively, the agency was in sterling form.

With around 70 trophies across major shows including Cannes Lions, D&AD, the One Show and seven Effies across three markets, M+C showed it produces standout, effective work.

Its work for Woolies at the Olympics, in particular, received global acclaim. System1, for example, ranked it as the third-best Olympics ad for the Paris Games, and it notched up 625 million impressions.

Internal initiatives, such as Open House and the InnovAItor Series, kept the culture sharp and inclusive, with future-facing thinking in the playbook.

It was far from a perfect run for M+C Saatchi Group in 2024, but its work remained strong. In hindsight, many of the changes that took place in the ’24 season are reflective of the adjusted strategy and greater focus on its non-advertising specialisms it would introduce in ’25.