Tilt Brand Solutions recently brought digital specialist Paul Dueman on board as Chief Strategy Officer. That made us think, has the time come for digital creative and strategy people to take a leadership position at agencies?
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In an interview with BestMediaInfo.com, Dueman said, “Leadership positions at brand and marketing agencies will increasingly be represented by a diversely larger specialisation pool. Data scientists, digital strategists, media specialists, brand strategists, consumer behaviourists, communication planners to name a few. Leadership will begin to be a collective rather than an individualistic responsibility.”
Paul said businesses today need a partner who can offer performance-based integrated solutions and omni-channel deployment as part of their marketing needs.
Tilt’s on-going plan is to design, build and offer value for money, marketing and advertising productised solutions to businesses, so as to be able to deliver consistent and impactful creativity at scale.
Demonstrating that capability, Tilt has just launched StudioT, its asset development studio. The studio has capabilities to conceive, produce and execute creative assets across the consumer journey, with a special focus on the fragmented long-tail of digital assets and content.
Excerpts:
You have spent two decades of your career entirely in technology and digital marketing. It is rare for any brand and communication company to appoint a digital specialist as its CSO. How do you see the transformation happening?
I would personally like to think of this opportunity being more of a pivot, rather than a transformation. The approach has always been to lead with brand, category and consumer insights, which will drive channel and touch-point communication, engagement and content solutions. This strategic approach empowers businesses to market impact fully in an omni-channel world, as opposed to channel-specific solutions. This is exactly the DNA of Tilt.
It may be early to ask but what changes and at which levels you are planning to make at the agency? Which divisions do you think need to be boosted to cater to current demands of clients?
Tilt since inception has had a comprehensive and well thought-through brand and communications consulting practice. Tilt is not structured by divisions per se; it is structured based on its practice and solution offerings. My brief at Tilt is clearly defined — enhance their brand strategy framework offering (full-brained thinking), sharpen their creative framework (One brand. many stories) and build scale on their execution framework (Comms genome). Businesses today need a partner that can offer performance-based integrated solutions and omni-channel deployment, as part of their marketing needs. Tilt has the perfect mix of talent, technology and data to deliver on that.
Has the time come for digital creative and strategy people to take a leadership position at agencies? What makes Tilt’s offerings different from other agencies and consultancies?
I would like to think that leadership positions at brand and marketing agencies will increasingly be represented by a diversely larger specialisation pool. Data scientists, digital strategists, media specialists, brand strategists, consumer behaviourists, communication planners to name a few. Leadership will begin to be a collective rather than an individualistic responsibility.
In fact the ‘full-brained thinking’ strategy leadership team at Tilt is a collective of left and right brain thinkers that marry data and analytics to society and culture, to deliver high-impact marketing and advertising solutions for brands and businesses. Just this approach at Tilt clearly demonstrates a differentiated solution philosophy that is quite unique among other agencies.
How challenging is it to generate ROI as demanded by brands where consumer behaviour is constantly evolving and restricting on less essential purchases?
In my opinion, return on marketing investments has less to do with consumer behaviour and more to do with brands and businesses having the ability to plan, measure and correctly attribute marketing impact, across every offline and online consumer touch-point and not just media metrics. The ability to develop and manage every channel and cohort touch-point, with focused and planned performance KPIs, attributed to each phase in the consumer journey, will help in reducing impact wastage and improved ROMI.
What will be Tilt’s focus areas for the rest of the year? How different will be your strategy this year than other previous years?
Tilt’s focus will continue to be delivering on customer success through its expertise of designing brands and their communication interventions to influence affinity, preference and behaviour at every touch-point of a consumer’s journey; across mediums, devices and platforms. The on-going plan is to design, build and offer value for money, marketing and advertising productised solutions to businesses, so as to be able to deliver consistent and impactful creativity at scale.
Demonstrating that capability, Tilt has just launched StudioT, its asset development studio. The studio has capabilities to conceive, produce and execute creative assets across the consumer journey, with a special focus on the fragmented long-tail of digital assets and content.
Is digital marketing killing marketing strategy?
It’s not about digital marketing vs. marketing at all. It’s about the ability for brands and businesses to market them in a digitised world. The medium is the marketplace. In fact more so post the Covid-19 pandemic. Same day delivery to most parts of India, instant credit approvals, no-questions-asked returns policies, try before you buy, rent everything models were once considered promotion strategies or business differentiators and service innovations. Today the digital ecosystem has made these offerings the de facto way of doing business on digital. Therefore, brands need to leverage digital by understanding consumer persona and behaviour, which in turn allows for sharper prospect targeting, custom brand experiences that cumulatively empower businesses to be impactful across the entire marketing funnel, in a contextual, relevant and helpful manner.