McCann Manchester announced today it is embarking on a programme of transformation for its Bonis Hall campus to support the way the business works with clients in the future and continue to attract the brightest talent in the industry.
The programme, which kicks off this month, will see the agency undergo a complete redesign and refit of its Oval building, which currently houses approximately 190 of the agency’s 380 staff and was built in 2003.
The announcement comes weeks after McCann Worldgroup UK announced its plans to relocate more than 1,200 of its staff across the majority of its London based agencies to 135 Bishopsgate at the intersection of Spitalfields, Shoreditch and The City.
According to McCann Worldgroup UK Chief Executive Mark Lund, “The development of McCann Manchester demonstrates our commitment as a business to delivering a best in class network agency offering across the whole of the UK and will further enhance what is already a highly successful and growing network with a major presence in seven major UK cities”
Commenting on the planned development, McCann Manchester Chief Executive Sue Little said, “The pre-eminence of diversity and inclusivity that rightly sit at the top of the agenda of any responsible business illustrate how our industry has changed and we are looking to build on our unique location to create a space fit for the future.
“The way we work in agencies has transformed over the past decade, yet our office space has not changed at the same pace. We have more channels, more complexity and more fragmentation of communications than at any point in history. Our role is to make sense of this complexity and deliver cohesive and compelling solutions to our clients’ many business problems. To do this requires an environment that powers this way of working and will make us a true destination employer.”
Once completed, the new look offices will further improve cross-fertilisation of ideas, providing a more informal working environment with areas that foster collaboration, blend public and private spaces and harness the very latest in technology and ways of working. Central to this initiative is the creation of a space that allows people to work in an independent way, while operating within a wider collaborative setting. This will enable the agency to build specialist multi-disciplinary project teams and bring them together more quickly to address rapidly evolving client needs.
The redevelopment is being led from a design perspective by SpaceInvader with JLL handling project management and Overbury responsible for construction work. The first phase of the project is set to be completed by Spring 2019.
The news of the planned redevelopment comes on the back of McCann UK being recognised as the UK’s most effective agency network at the highly prestigious IPA Awards recently and McCann Manchester picking up two IPA Effectiveness Awards and two UK Effies for the commercial effectiveness of its campaigns for clients.