HAVAS Establishes Dedicated Customer Experience Network

Havas Creative has launched Havas CX – a new, international network dedicated to delivering meaningful brand experiences across the entire customer journey. It brings together more than 1200 people from 20 of Havas Creative’s global agency groups and local agencies, plus additional CX specialists from across the Havas network, under a common structure, governance, methodology and mission.

Havas CX will span 18 major Havas Villages around the world, with key hubs in London, Paris, New York and Mumbai. It brings together global agency groups including ekino (digital transformation), BETC FullSix (customer experience), Havas helia (customer engagement) and award-winning leaders in their markets including Plastic Havas, Langoor, Boondoggle, Gate One, Think Design, Host/Havas, Project House and Intellignos.

Havas CX’s competitive advantage lies in its ability to combine this deep-rooted, newly coordinated CX expertise with Havas’ rich insights into modern consumers (via its proprietary Meaningful Brands study of 350,000 consumers), its ground-breaking Prosumer studies of ‘leading edge’ consumers, and its X Index – a new barometer for measuring and managing customer experience) and its unique, integrated Village model – establishing the ability to look at customer experience from a more holistic, comprehensive and less siloed perspective.

This combination provides the network with the ability to marry the technological, functional aspects of CX with its clients’ brand promise and the personal and cultural context devised from Havas and BETC’s consumer insights.

The move to establish a dedicated CX network follows the successful launch of the BETC Fullsix agency model in Paris and the acquisition in 2019 of best-in-class specialists Langoor (digital engagement), Think Design (user experience) and Gate One (a digital and transformation consultancy).

The component agencies’ branding will be updated to reflect the new network identity. The new network already boasts clients including Reckitt Benckiser, Tesco, Maersk, Club Med, AbbVie, Airtel, Starbucks, Canal+.

The Havas CX network will be led by Yann Doussot (Global COO) overseen by an executive committee chaired by Chris Hirst (Havas Creative Global CEO), Mercedes Erra (Chairwoman BETC FULLSIX), Donna Murphy (Global CEO Havas Health & You) and Peter Mears (Global CEO Havas Media Group). And a strategic committee chaired by Hirst including Tracey

Barber (Global CMO), Stéphanie Nerlich (Global Chief Client Officer, Executive Managing Partner, Havas North America), Olivier Vigneaux (CEO BETC FULLSIX), Xavier Rees (CEO Havas London), Mark Sinnock (Chief Strategy Officer Havas UK).

Yannick Bolloré, Chairman and CEO Havas Group, says: “Having pursued an acquisition strategy of cutting-edge agencies in the customer engagement space over recent years, we feel the time is right to unify our agencies under one joined-up, global network brand. In Havas CX, we believe we have the most comprehensive customer engagement proposition the industry has to offer – and it’s one we intend to continue to strengthen by hiring top talent and making further best-in-class acquisitions.”

Chris Hirst, Global CEO of Havas Creative, adds: “Today customer experience is the bedrock on which a brand is built – indeed, the majority of a consumer’s experience of any brand won’t be through above-the-line advertising, but their personal interactions with it. As technology advances almost any conceivable purchase is just a couple of clicks away and the opportunities for brands to get it right, or wrong, are manifold. CX is the new battle ground – and the brands that get it right will win, and those that don’t will lose; it’s as simple as that.

“Now is the right time to be overt in our commitment to the one discipline that today underpins all others by bringing our 1200-plus specialists into a single brand. With our integrated village model and our proprietary consumer insights, the Havas CX Network will significantly extend the power and capability of our offer.

“The network will be guided by our world-class leaders in France, UK, US, Asia and LATAM ensuring we share learning, best practice and capabilities to make the network greater than the sum of its parts and helping our clients build deeper and more meaningful connections with their customers”