Who's your digital czar?
Adweek has an article which highlights the latest round of me-too posturing from Agency-land:
Both holding companies and individual agencies are tapping high-level strategists to serve as digital czars in hopes of catching up to the obviously changing media landscape.
The article cites recent moves by the likes of Ogilvy, Publicis, MDC Partners and Goodby to hire "czar's" to run their digital capabilities and also references the consequences of not doing so (such as Nike's Wieden departure)
In all cases, the shops insist bringing in a high-level strategist is not a sign of digital weakness, but a move to coordinate efforts, both on behalf of clients and internally, with the goal of placing digital at the core of their culture.
I'm not being skeptical about bringing in digital superstars to lead interactive at all, I'm just saying that clients needs to do 3 things first:
- Look beyond the window dressing. You need to be convinced that the entire organization has fully bought into digital and is committed to a future with interactive as a core component (if not THE core)
- Has said czar been empowered to do their jobs or are they nothing more than puppets?
- Who is your digital czar? Without an equivalent in your own organization, how exactly do you expect your agency to be successful?
As Bob Greenberg says in the artlcle:
"Every client is going to have the same kind of situation happen within two years. [Agencies] have to indicate to their clients, to their staff or for real that they're making an investment into digital."
No doubt, we will see more czars being appointed (or is that annointed) in the weeks and months to come. I am still surprised how little the largest holding companies are doing to follow suit. With the exception of Publicis and most recenty MDC, IPG, Omnicom and WPP have been virtually non-existent in terms of like-minded moves. Bizarre.
