The Internationalist
Agency Innovators 2009
October 2009
Daryl Lee
Global President, Communications Planning & Strategy
Universal McCann New York
CURRENT CLIENTS: Microsoft, Sony, MasterCard, Bacardi and UPS
BORN: South Africa
WORKED IN: New York, South Africa and the United Kingdom
Daryl Lee’s efforts are insuring that Universal McCann is a leading destination for integrated marketing and communications strategy solutions.
His strengths include specialization in integrated marketing communications strategy, marketing plan development, channel planning, 360-degree messaging architectures, advertising metrics and ROI. As UM’s Global President of Communications Planning & Strategy, he oversees both the communications planning and research teams — two areas which are playing an integral role in the evolution of the Universal McCann brand.
Communications Planning at UM is dedicated to generating profound consumer insights that yield the most surprising results for its clients. As the head of the discipline, Daryl is responsible for directing the agency’s Communications Planning specialists around the world to make the most of their innate curiosity, ultimately turning media insights into marketing breakthroughs for the agency’s global brands.
Before joining Universal McCann, Daryl was a Senior Partner and Worldwide Group Director of the IBM Strategy Group, and Joint Operating Board member at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. He pioneered the IMC strategy function on IBM, the agency’s flagship global account, and developed a channel planning methodology called “Combustion,” which was piloted in the US, Japan and China, and has been adopted across Ogilvy globally as the channel planning standard.
Prior to Ogilvy, he was a Marketing Strategist for healthcare and financial services clients at McKinsey & Company, where he provided strategy and marketing consulting to senior management of Fortune 100 clients.
Interesting Insight: Daryl returned to his native South Africa to participate in setting up and running the nation's first democratically-elected transitional government. He found that the experience of working with such diverse cultures contributed significantly to better understanding the issues facing global clients and their challenges in cross-border communications.
Other International Background: A Rhodes Scholar, Daryl earned a D.Phil. in English Literature from Oxford University, where he has taught American Drama and Modern Literature. (DPhil is an advanced research degree awarded on the basis of a thesis and oral examination, modeled on the German and American Ph. D.)
