By Carey Finn. Martin MacGregor, the CEO of Connect talks attention frameworks, the agency’s growth, and why it’s a good time to be in media.
When Connect launched in 2013, as part of the M&C Saatchi Group, it was a chance for Martin MacGregor to do some “smart hybrid thinking around message and media”. He did just that, and over the last 12 years the media agency has grown into a 50-person strong operation that is today part of the Up&Up Group. None of this was in his original career plan, however.
“I thought I was going to be an accountant,” MacGregor chuckles. “I majored in economics. But media was something that I was always interested in. When I was a kid, I used to read Time Magazine, and was a bit ‘media obsessive’.” It stemmed from an interest in the world, and in news, politics, and history — and everything else. “In those days, media was about ‘new’; it was less about entertainment, and more about news,” he says.
MacGregor formalised his passion at the postgraduate level, focusing in media at the AAA School of Advertising. The first chapter in his career saw him working “at a few agencies” before he ended up at Ogilvy in Cape Town in 2000, which he describes as being “a university of advertising” at the time. “I absolutely loved it,” he says. “I worked on the Old Mutual account. Funnily enough, I worked with a lot of people, like Mike Abel, Jacques Burger, Jason Harrison and Robert Grace — who are the people I work with now, as part of the Up&Up Group.”
“Where the smart media people are”
“At that time, media was part of the integrated agency ecosystem,” says MacGregor. “It was all sort of one thing. The big hotshop that was starting up was Nota Bene, and I just wanted to go and work there, because I thought, well this is where the smart media people are.” MacGregor joined the agency and cut his teeth on the Brandhouse business, which was made up of Heineken and Diageo. In total, he spent nearly nine years at the agency, leaving as managing director.
In the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, MacGregor found himself becoming “a little bit jaded around the big agency groups”, and started looking for a different path. A random encounter with Mike Abel set him on it. “He was just starting the M&C Saatchi Group here, and he basically said to me, well, why don’t you come and join us, start a media agency, and make of it whatever you want,” says MacGregor.
Starting – and growing – Connect
MacGregor set to work on Connect, which shared offices with M&C Saatchi Abel in Cape Town. Heineken was already a group client, and on his second day at the agency MacGregor found himself pitching on Edgars, which they won. “And that’s kind of how we started, from a media point of view,” he says. “We were also servicing Takealot, from a creative and media point of view.”
A major brand on the agency’s client list today is MTN, whose media Connect handles across both South Africa and Africa. “That piece of business was won in an integrated (group) pitch in 2023,” says MacGregor. “What was exciting for us there was obviously the scale of the business, but also the opportunity to work across a lot of African markets.”
Other key names include Woolworths, Spur Corporation, Astron (with the rebrand from Caltex), RCL Foods, and Lexus. Billings come in at approximately R800 mil. to R1 billion. The agency is certified as BB-BEE Level 1 and is 100% locally owned, by the Up&Up Group, with a licence agreement with the global M&C Saatchi Group.
Steering the media ship in the right direction
MacGregor wanted to try something different with Connect. “I said, I’ve done the integrated agency thing and I’ve done the independent media agency thing,” he explains. “And there was definitely scope for [something different], where you keep your media independence, but you also understand messaging from a media point of view, so that you work closely with the creatives, the guys who are developing the ideas and the messaging, to ensure that your media has impact.”
The focus of the agency was “very much based on that Nota Bene principle, around the value of media strategy and media thinking,” MacGregor says. “My way of looking at it is: it’s a bit like if you’re on a ship. If you’re trying to reach an island, you need to make sure that the ship is heading in the right direction, and that the engine is running efficiently. Lots of media agencies, I feel, spend a lot of time looking at the efficiency of the media, but the ship’s heading in the wrong direction.”
Over the years, Connect has developed a tightknit group of discipline specialists who sit in different agencies, but “they all know each other and work together well, allowing them to respond to varying client needs,” MacGregor says. The agency is able to pitch independently, as well as with other agencies in the group.
A new attention framework
In 2025, Connect’s focus is on attention. “We’ve spent a good part of the last couple of years in terms of how we’ve positioned ourselves, very much talking about attention, and the role that we can play, as a media agency, in making sure that we can get the attention of the consumers of our clients’ brands,” says MacGregor. “It’s brought us back to our roots, which is around ensuring that media and message is working together incredibly strongly. If the messaging that you’re receiving is relevant, you’re going to get someone’s attention.”
MacGregor describes the attention space as one that is both fundamental and exciting. “We’ve opened up a lot of presentations with a single question, which is: are the people that you’re reaching getting the message,” he says. “It kind of speaks to what media agencies were always about, which was buying reach. In the current fragmented media landscape and the distracted media consumer environment, you can’t just buy reach, you need to make sure you’re getting people’s attention as well. It’s probably been the easiest sell of a strategy framework that I’ve ever had, because it just hits the bulls-eye of where the consumer, brands, and clients are right now, in terms of their pain points.”
Connect’s “attention framework” is a key differentiator that makes clients’ eyes light up, says MacGregor. “We’ve broken it up into two different areas,” he explains. “The one is understanding the attention moment, so making sure that we use all of the data, all of the research that we have to understand audiences, understand how they consume media, what kind of competitive pressure they’re at, and where they are in terms of the demand cycle – are they open to buying a Lexus right now, or is it something they might do in the next 18 months? And then we make sure that the plan itself speaks to the right places, moments, and messages – for the right outcomes.”
The agency is sailing into new territory as it tries to answer the question of how to measure attention. MacGregor says that a project is underway in this space, but is unable to reveal any details.
Media’s time is now
Changing consumer preferences and socio-economic challenges aside, MacGregor believes that media’s time has finally arrived. “There’s always been this funny relationship between creative and media in the advertising agency space,” he says. “When I started, everyone was like – you want to be a creative, that’s the exciting space. Media is just spreadsheets and budgets. But if I look back over the last 20 years, media has been the most exciting space. There’s just so much going in the media space, locally and globally. I think that media agencies and smart media people, hopefully, should be able to lead brands into very interesting and exciting places.”
“The fundamental needs [of consumers] don’t change,” says MacGregor. “They still want news, for example, it’s just the ways of getting it [that change].” He speculates that in the next five years, there will be increased unbundling in the entertainment and content space, where, for example, a rugby fan can pay to stream a game on demand. “It feels like it’s going to move from this space where you’re forced to buy a whole lot of things that you don’t want, to just buying what you want,” he says. “It’s going to be great for brands, because it means you’ll be able to find your relevant consumer and get their attention much more easily.”
Carey Finn is a contributing writer to MarkLives MEDIA and MarkLives.com.
