César Vacchiano, Global CEO and co-Founder of Scopen
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Cesar Vacchiano, Global CEO and co-Founder of Scopen will be arriving in South Africa on 7 November for a three week schedule of agency presentations for Scopen agencyScope 2017.  Ahead of that visit, he has shared a few very important facts: 

232 professionals (mainly CMOs) have been interviewed face-to-face, from 185 companies in South Africa. On top of marketers we have interviewed 152 professionals working in creative and media agencies. Overall we have interviewed 384 professionals working in the Communications Industry in South Africa.

We have gathered information of 492 client-agency relationships in 2017 (340 within creative agencies and 159 within media agencies) compared with 206 in 2016 (139 within creative agencies and 67 within media agencies).

One of the most important figures is that investment in Digital has increased up to 24.4% from 18.6% in 2016 (5.8% increase in one year).

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Only 51% of clients working with creative agencies state that their agency is advanced in Digital. This figure is particularly low for agencies that were born as advertising agencies (27%) and it goes up to 90% when clients evaluate their Digital agencies. 

When we split results for Multinational agencies and Local independents, it is impressive that 58% of independents are perceived as advanced in Digital while the figure is only 44% for multinational agencies.

More than 200 agencies have been analysed. When we analyse the top 10 agencies best perceived in the market place, we find six multinationals and four independents but among top 10 in highest client satisfaction we find six independents and four multinationals.

Independents show the highest levels of client satisfaction and higher levels of Digital expertise! 

Vacchiano concludes, “ We have a wealth of data to share with agencies and I am delighted that we are experiencing such high levels of interest and take up for the 2017 study.  I am looking forward to meeting more than 30 agencies, along with our South African partner, Johanna McDowell of the IAS, across South Africa over three weeks in November.”


SCOPEN Africa was launched in South Africa in 2016 in partnership with the Independent Agency Search & Selection Company.  The partnership between IAS and SCOPEN Africa is structured as follows: Mazole Holdings – which owns 100% of IAS now owns 26% of SCOPEN Africa (Grupo Consultores Africa).  Mazole is 40% black owned with a level 4 BEE rating. For information on SCOPEN Africa please visit scopen.com