ONE House has a professional team, supported by the best tools, and operates using well-designed processes. This is what makes us stand out and is our strategic direction for growth,” says Marcin Piecewicz, CEO of ONE House.
You’ve made your debut in our survey this year and, right from the jump, you’ve earned phenomenal ratings from a large sample group. Congratulations! Have you been popping champagne corks?
Marcin Piecewicz:
It’s tradition for us to celebrate our successes together. We have a meeting and a little treat at the office, and this time was no different. We are thrilled with our clients’ ratings and having received the ‘Reliable Partner’ award in the 2024 Media House of the Year competition. Our entire team felt truly appreciated. We’re confident in the quality of our work, but receiving confirmation in this client satisfaction survey is something else entirely. Our debut in the survey, however, was preceded by eleven years of hard work. I was also personally pleased that such a large number of clients took the time to evaluate us. From the beginning, we have been committed to maintaining high standards in our client relationships – and their ratings show that this was a smart decision. Clients are acknowledging ONE House and entrusting us with more and more projects.
Last year was a notable one for you, including winning the international pitch to service OMRON Healthcare Europe. What other significant events have occurred recently?
One of our most significant achievements in 2024 has been earning Google Premier Partner status, which is a distinction given only to the top 3% of partner agencies. Interestingly, it’s not always the biggest companies that earn this status, as it’s awarded more for the quality of campaigns rather than the size of budgets. This type of recognition helps us attract international clients, like OMRON. It’s also worth mentioning that we are not merely a specialized digital agency, but a media agency with a broad range of expertise in planning and purchasing all types of media.
For the successful OMROM pitch, we were competing against the Dutch division of Dentsu, which had been handling OMRON’s account for several years. Both companies are headquartered in the same city – Amsterdam – so it seemed like a done deal. Yet, we were the agency that was chosen, and I know it wasn’t just because of the cost. We, along with other Polish agencies, are winning more and more often because of quality [of services]. We are widely regarded as highly-skilled specialists in the tech sector.
Another major success was winning the bid to handle campaigns for Sinsay [an LPP brand]. Once again, we showed that we can outperform the largest network agencies. This is just one in a series of pitches we have won, and our winning streak has continued through the early part of this year. Meanwhile, existing clients have continued to use our services, so it looks like 2024 will be another period of significant revenue growth for us.
What do you think is the cornerstone of the agency’s success?
First and foremost, it’s the focus on the quality of work for our clients, while also prioritizing the development of our team and the fundamentals of our business. We only participated in the ‘Media Marketing Polska’ competition and the client satisfaction survey 11 years after our founding, not because we didn’t have notable achievements earlier, but because we wanted to focus on building a team capable of competing with the largest media agencies. Now, we have definitely reached that level.
I believe that having a well-thought-out business strategy and effective internal communication are fundamental to our success. Everyone at the agency knows our short-, medium-, and long-term goals, as well as how we plan to achieve them. In addition to having clearly defined goals, we have also identified growth cornerstones that we systematically work on.
Our survey has you listed under media houses, but you’ve already moved beyond this categorization.
ONE House was initially conceived as something more than just a media house. We wanted to think holistically about the needs of our clients. We were one of the first agencies with this approach, back when the trend was towards agency specialization, and long before strategies like the Publicis Groupe’s ‘The Power of One’ emerged in multinational holdings. Clients had begun to clearly communicate that the complexity of advertising groups shouldn’t be their problem, and that it was up to these groups to offer integrated, comprehensive solutions. We have been paying close attention to this type of feedback since we started, and, since 2020, we have been evolving as the One House Advertising Group.
You are growing not only organically, but through acquisitions as well.
Yes, in 2022, we took a majority stake in OS3 – one of the oldest Polish agencies, with a history stretching back more than 25 years. They started with digital, but later expanded their services to include creative and strategy. Our group also includes Media SWOT, our media agency, and Silver Agency, which specializes in silver marketing.
In growing the agency, our goal has always been to adapt to our clients’ needs. They increasingly expect a more comprehensive approach and bespoke solutions. Now, as the ONE House Group, we can meet these expectations and execute even the most complex projects within a single, multidisciplinary team. Projects that require expertise from multiple departments are coordinated by our professional Client Service team. Clients can either have a single point of contact in Client Service or, if they prefer, they can interact with individual team members directly. Our aim is to simplify the entire process as much as possible. Additionally, the broader the scope of our collaboration with a client across the entire group, the better the price terms we can offer and the more we can optimize the budget.
We live by the the motto “All for Marketing,” which best summarizes what ONE House has always wanted to be – a full-service agency for marketing communications.
One of ONE House’s distinguishing characteristics is the considerable attention you devote to employee education and training. Among other initiatives, you run a proprietary project called StażUp.
We’ve had this internship program for 8 years now, and some participants have gone on to become managers and top-tier experts within our organization. We continuously tweak the program to keep up with market developments. Besides our internal training program, we offer a comprehensive training platform for both current and prospective clients under the Marcus Academy name (marcusacademy.pl). It consists of 10 full days of seminars covering various marketing disciplines, and each session is rated by participants. So far, the lowest rating we’ve received is, if I recall, 4.8 out of 5. Our team members conduct these seminars, not outside coaches. I believe ours is a unique approach on the market. I don’t know of any other agency that offers such a well-organized system of annual training cycles for such a large number of clients. We have already trained hundreds of marketers and can see the effects – it’s simply easier to work with people who understand our work and speak the same, professional language.
For a lot of companies, employee turnover is a major issue. Do you have any strategies for retaining people, especially those who are well-trained?
Of course we have turnover as well, but I think that the rate is lower than the industry average. Why do people stay with us? I believe it’s because we are still an agency that communicates openly. Here, everyone can have an impact on the company from the moment they start, more so than in larger organizations. On the one hand, everything here is much better organized than in small companies. On the other, we are not so large that someone joining [our team] feels like they are just a cog in a machine.
Everyone who joins our team is welcomed as someone we truly care about. Our onboarding process has consistently been praised by new employees, and interns feel supported right from the start. If we’re being honest, working in an agency can be demanding and occasionally stressful, and not everyone can adapt. However, I think that those who choose to stay with us find their niche. Usually, one of two scenarios develops. Either people stay with us for a very long time, or they realize within a few months that the organization is either too small or, conversely, too large for them. The entire ONE House Group employs nearly 100 people.
What are your plans for the near future?
Over the next two and a half years, we aim to double our revenues through organic growth of the companies currently in the ONE House Group, as well as through acquisitions of stakes in other agencies. We have a very attractive proposition for agencies interested in joining a large, independent advertising group. For instance, they can benefit from the support of our Shared Services Center, which can be quite advantageous. They can also reach clients already served by our group, participate in joint pitches, and take advantage of the opportunity to acquire and service international clients in a systematic manner.
As you might expect, one of the key areas we’re paying close attention to and starting to work on as a group is the application of artificial intelligence. We’re looking at how to leverage AI’s potential not just for our internal operations but also how to use it for optimizing our work for clients. The goal is to provide increasingly better and faster solutions by integrating AI into our systemic processes.
To sum up, I’d like to reiterate that it’s our professional team, supported by the best tools and working with well-designed processes, that separates us from the competition. This is our strategic direction for growth and a key factor in our success.
Paweł Piasecki spoke with Marcin Piecewicz
The interview was originally posted here:
