Pursuing a Game-Changing Business Idea. Interview with Linda Sawyer

Linda Sawyer, a 27 year Deutsch veteran, including 10 years as CEO and most recently as Chairman, has made the dramatic, transformative announcement to leave the agency at the end of 2016 and start her own ecommerce company. 

According to the press release, Sawyer “has played an instrumental role in contributing to Deutsch’s rise as a top-tier agency and industry leader with revenue increasing more than ten-fold since joining in 1989” during her tenure.

For many of us, the idea of leaving a secure corporate job where we have attained great success is  anathema. So what prompted Sawyer to make this decision? I sat down with her and asked the following questions:

Charlene Weisler: Linda, why the move?

Linda Sawyer: I get asked that question a lot. I currently have a dream job and have been with the agency for a long time. I have been in the business for 33 years and at Deutsch for 27.  I became CEO in 2005. I became Chairman two-years ago and I implemented succession plans at that time. The agency is in a strong place so I felt that it was the right time for me to pursue a new challenge.   And I believe I have an idea that is a real game changer.

Charlene Weisler: What are your plans?

Linda Sawyer: I haven’t publically disclosed the nature of my new business but it is in ecommerce. I will be capitalizing on all of the things I learned throughout my career. This will be a business that I can craft and create, making all the right business decisions from inception. The advertising business has been great in preparing me for this next chapter.

Charlene Weisler: Why go into ecommerce?

Linda Sawyer: Ecommerce is part of every business experience to some degree and will provide convenience and ease to the consumer as a benefit. 

Charlene Weisler: Can you share some details of your new business?

Linda Sawyer: I want the element of surprise and excitement, so what I can share is that this category has a significant void that is ripe for a fresh and new solution. It is a category buster.

Charlene Weisler: What have you learned as a female executive that you can share with other female executives who are interested in advancing?

Linda Sawyer: There is some irony in my answer. My rise at Deutsch was performance based. I felt gender was a non-issue here. But when I was appointed CEO and became more involved with the industry, it was profoundly obvious to me that I was a minority. My advice is to give yourself permission to believe and expect that when you attain your goals, you will ascend and gender will be a non-issue.  Work for a company where the metrics to success are clear.  

Charlene Weisler: How has the agency world evolved since you first started?

Linda Sawyer: There have been two dramatic changes in our industry – the media itself in how we reach consumers and the technology we use to reach them. The fundamentals of developing big ideas and the creative we bring forth hasn’t changed. But it has been influenced and informed by how we need to engage with them. Today’s consumer is driving the relationship and is changing the way the dialogue happens.

Charlene Weisler: What is the state of creativity at the agencies?

Linda Sawyer: The competitive framework is vastly changing. Media agencies are now competing with creative agencies and also compete with companies like Google with in house capabilities. Agencies need to differentiate what makes them stand out. They need new resources, capabilities, and partners to help them evolve. They need to be ahead of the curve.

Charlene Weisler: How do you see the agency world changing in the next three to five years?

Linda Sawyer: I continue to see the need for new types of thinking in media, marketing and the role of technology. Media and technology need to be further embedded in the creative process and move away from the traditional agency model. This shift will influence the type of people that will work at agencies – they may not be from a traditional agency background.

Charlene Weisler: What advice would you give to a college student who is considering a career in media?

Linda Sawyer: Follow your passions, things that you love doing and areas where you have a curiosity. Look at the bigger context of pop culture and be interested in the world at large. Develop a bigger perspective and make yourself stand out.

Charlene Weisler: Do you have any advice for those in the middle of their careers?

Linda Sawyer: I was always very thoughtful about my career and viewed it as a portfolio of experiences. It is important to step outside of your regular work duties and see what will inform your next steps. My career consists of building blocks that were very purposeful. Think through your career path. You may not know exactly where you will wind up but you need to be challenged to continually develop new skills.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBlizBloggers.com
 

Becoming a Creative Technologist. Interview with Trevor O’Brien

Trevor O’Brien, Partner and Chief Technology Officer at Deutsch has found a career that perfectly balances his right and left brain talents. He studied computer science at university in London and, upon graduation, veered away from the prescribed IT career path, accepting instead a job in media. “I got into a creative environment right out of school,” he explained, “and I realized that I liked the freedom to work in creative forms.” 

His creative/computer science background was well timed in the age of media data and analytics. It led him to a career in advertising helping agency clients leverage technology to best reach their target consumers. Today, his work in Deutsch’s NY office involves the use of A.I. (artificial intelligence) to build intuitive sites and mechanisms as part of a greater agency team that includes talent from across the agency landscape.

Charlene Weisler: You studied IT and yet found yourself in a completely different type of IT-based career. Does that surprise you?

Trevor O’Brien: Yes. I didn’t know about this world of creative interest in technology when I was a student and even today, when I talk at schools, they don’t know that a career on Madison Avenue is an option. The students only know the big tech players. I knew nothing about the creative space and the use of technologies to do creative things.

Charlene: How has the advertising industry evolved since you first started?

Trevor: When I first started my agency career, they were trying to figure out what to do with people like me - for example, which meetings to attend. And the project process was linear – once the creative was done it was then passed on to the technologists to place on platforms etc. But now we are collected into a project team, which is much more intuitive. Technologists, like creatives, are problem solvers and it all works well. At Deutsch, all participants working on a project that will take a month or two to complete meet in a room called a War Room in order to organize and prioritize. The team works on the project through its duration including design and software within and through the creative phase. The space has matured enough so there is value in having a creative technologist alongside a director, for example.

Charlene: Can you give me an example of a War Room project?

Trevor: Yes. We are excited about our client ACUVUE which is the premier contact lens company owned by J&J. In February we started a global website that was specifically developed for that brand. It allowed us to use the War Room model – with a producer, designer etc – to envision the user experience from all angles with all of us sitting together in the new development process. Every two weeks we would deliver a new piece of the project for review by the group to assess and attach storytelling to the general brand advertising and media mix. This was a business changer for the client. We will be launching in multiple markets this year. A.I. will impact how the content will connect to consumers.

Charlene: How important is TV in the media mix at this time and as it moves into connected TV?

Trevor: My expertise is primarily in digital but I work closely with our Chief Creative Officer, Dan Kelleher. We try to look at ideas with both a TV and digital execution. I was involved in personalizing TV ads for some time, based on browser data, so the consumer can see different versions of the creative at the same time. I see the future of TV as more addressable, more cloud based technology where the video is rendered dynamically creating the potential for thousands of personalized versions that can be targeted to your TV set top box. I believe that online will move to TV and other screens. TV today is an awareness driver and measurement is still tough – it is still not a perfect science. With the move to smart TVs, then TV will move from awareness to a more personalized messaging to you to better connect you with a brand.

Charlene: What advice would you give to the next generation of IT students?

Trevor: For me, the days of tech people being confined to dark backrooms are gone. The nerd is the new cool. There are new ways to take your talent in new creative ways. Take your technical knowledge and discover new ways to use it to do new things. There is so much data and there will be so much more. We need amazing data scientists who are also creative and have the ability to tell stories using data. The data scientist who can bring a narrative to the numbers will be golden.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com
 

Yes, Creative and Data Can Be Friends, According to PSFK

Something strange happened at the recent PeopleFront and the PSFK conferences. The PeopleFront, based on the importance of data driven solutions, led to a discussion of the importance of the creative. PSFK, based on the importance of creative ideas, devoted the afternoon to big data, artificial intelligence, IBM’s Watson, cognitive computing and analytical insights. Hey, what gives here? 


At the Peoplefront, Facebooks Director of Ads Research, Daniel Slotwiner noted that "we are all working on data strategy; Data for insights, data for outcomes. But creative is one of the most important things. We can get the right eyeballs in right time and right format but what if it is bad content?"

At PSFK, the discussion of data was intertwined with the creativity of invention. Steven Dean, author of the book, Quantified Self noted that “most individuals don't know what big data means. But if it helps to build the right products it is providing value to consumer.” Tara Greer, EVP/Executive Creative Director, platforms at DEUTSCH LA added that we are “living in big data environment; the Internet of things involving body, health, in home, in vehicles. (For example there are) smart chopsticks to see if you are eating reused oil.” 

How much is data impacting the creative process? For some at the PSFK conference, it helps in curating content. According to Cloth’s co-founder Seth Porges, “Big data is important when assessing different content. It can help curate content for you.” For others it is a gut check. Dean says that he “thinks about the data, but I opt for experiences that are narrative and storytelling - Not numbers. I must make meaning out of the data that is there.”

In the world of gaming, the subtle use of behavior modifiers, including the use of a certain color, is tested. Jamin Warren, founder of Kill Screen, explained the phenomena of GamerGate and the misogyny in the gaming world. “There are flaws in how we communicate online. (We have experimented with) changing color of text to see if it impacts behavior.”

But when does data cross over the line? How much is too much? Greer explained that there is a “gap between big data and big wisdom. Measurement used to be an epiphany but there are challenges to move beyond the data to create meaningful experiences.” Porges added, “You run the risk of losing taste when you apply too much data. (You) need a chance to experiment outside the data.”

There is a “big moral question” according to Greer regarding data privacy. “More people are cognizant today but years ago big data was utopian. Now there is a big rebellion against big data.” But Dean admitted that “there are some aspects of my life that I would like to leave up to an algorithm, like what should I eat, for example.” In a perfect, more on-demand world, data could be used as a benevolent influencer. Tegan Faan, founder at Gigit said, “Data in an algorithm can give me simplicity. It can make my life simpler and match people to their unique interests. Personalization.”

In my experience, creative and quant have had a love/ hate relationship. Research could be held up by creators as a vindication of their gut instincts or a report card of their lacking performance. But I have always felt that the two disciplines are intertwined.  If data is the messenger, it is the content that forms the message. Without either you just have meaningless noise.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

The Power of Data in Advertising. Q&A with Anush Prabhu.

Anush Prabhu has an unusual title – Chief Channel Planning & Investment Officer. But his background is immersed in analytics and data that define him as a researcher in my opinion. He essentially harnesses data and connects it to communications planning for Deutsch NY. Research, in Prabhu’s opinion, is part and parcel of analytics, qual and quant work with a vast repository of new, different data sets to add context and insight into consumer behavior.

In this fascinating interview, Prabhu talks about his work at Deutsch, fragmentation, cross platform solutions, issues of privacy in tracking consumers, his “remarkability” metric, the future of sales in an increasingly programmatic media world and some ideas about what the future of media will look like.

There are five videos in this interview:

Subject                                                 Length (in minutes)

Background                                                    (4:59)

Data, Cross Platform, Privacy                       (7:56)

Remarkability Metric                                    (6:20)

Programmatic, Future of Sales                      (6:53)

Predictions                                                      (3:35)

Charlene Weisler interviews Anush Prabhu who talks about his background in this 4:59 minute video:

CW: How has the whole field of research and analytics evolved since you started in the industry?

AP: I think what has changed is the vastness of the information and the fragmented nature of what we can get in terms of data. I can get to specific mobile behavior for a person when they walk into a Gap store and then they go into another store. I get all that data about how they behave just from geo-located data. At the same time I can look at social behavior. I can look at what they are shopping on a particular aisle.  Those are things that behavior-wise we did not have access to. That today we have access to in a bigger and broader way.  Where we used to use quantitative research to get some of that information, today we can actually get the actual behavior. And we will see that change even more as we move into the realm where we can see more and more information about a particular customer.

CW: It sounds like analytics is moving into one to one marketing.

AP: Yes. We will not be advertising to the masses. We will advertise directly to the person in a more precise way. That is because of the power of data that we will have at our fingertips and the technology that enables us to deliver against the data and communicate to the consumer at the right place at the right time.

Anush Prabhu talks to CharleneWeisler about the range of datasets he uses in this 7:56 minute video:

CW: Can you talk about some of the data sets that you currently use?

AP: We acquire data from various aspects of the funnel. We have social data that we get from some of the propriety tools and botnets like Netbase. We get information from the Forresters of the world. We get specific media data from MRI. We also do a lot of our own proprietary research from a quant perspective where we can tie into the social aspects of people’s behavior by getting their permission to lean into the Facebook status updates and such almost using Facebook as a research or search mechanism where I can look at what you typed in and your status reports for the past six months and see whether you are talking about food or getting into finance. I can tell if you are an influencer. There are various aspects that we can now plug in.

CW: How you get all these data to work in harmony with each other?

AP: Obviously it is not very simple because of these data are coming in from different sources. At the end of the day we have to tie it in together. Some of the time it is easier to tie the data together. Sometimes we need to make a leap in making sure that we are connecting the dots. This is where a little bit of art comes in as well as experience to figure out what is really happening and understanding it.  Sometimes we add on quantitative or qualitative research that starts to bind these data elements. You will see that more solidified as we proceed. 

Charlene Weisler talks to Deutsch's Anush Prabhu about his "remarkability" metric for content in this 6:20 minute video:

CW: Do you think we will ever see commercial ratings?

AP: That is interesting because as we proceed into the cross media world, as television gets more digitized, as Netflix becomes a channel and as ABC becomes a Netflix or a digital channel it will be interesting to see how we measure a digital view versus a television view. To me, yes I do believe that there may be an opportunity to rate commercials but at the same time I also feel that the entire system may need to be overhauled in terms how we measure everything because it is not as simple as it used to be. The question really is “What is a view” in today’s world. And should we be measuring just a view or the impact of that view.

Charlene Weisler talks to Anush Prabhu about Programmatic in this 6:53 minute video:

Anush Pradhu offers some of his insights into the future of the media industry in this 3:35 minute video:

First published on www.MediaBizBloggers.com