ViacomCBS announced BET Studios on Wednesday, a new venture led by Aisha Summers-Burke that provides equity ownership to Black content creators across TV and film. Top line The studio will create content for a variety of ViacomCBS platforms–including Paramount+, Showtime, CBS, Nickelodeon, BET+ and BET–as well as third-party platforms that “seek best-in-class content from both…
Commercial Frequency Really Wears Me Out!
I don’t hear much about commercial wear out as much as I once did. Yet it’s very measurable, especially with digital media and its ability to analyze data. It appears to me that creative isn’t always
being developed with that issue in mind.
being developed with that issue in mind.
Inside Kabul’s Green Zone, Taliban Fighters Guard Abandoned Embassies | WSJ
How The&Partnership Uses the Office to Create a Competitive Advantage
Early in the Covid-19 lockdowns, questions of returning to the office typically revolved around proposed dates and mask protocols. But as the pandemic continued into its second year, it has become a highly complex–and potentially volatile–topic at companies around the world. For many organizations, it’s no longer about a return to normalcy; it’s about defining…
This Fin-tech Startup Is on a Mission to Redefine Business Insurance
When entrepreneurs dream of starting their own business, setting up the insurance policy isn’t usually one of the things they’re most excited about. It’s often more of a headache than a thrilling milestone–but insurtech startup Next Insurance wants to change that. Keeping central its goal to “help entrepreneurs thrive,” said chief marketer Melanie Chase, Next…
At the Office or Home, Bonobos Bets on ‘Back to Business’ Style
Whether men remain home or plan to return to the office, Bonobos is betting they will want to dress up again this fall after months of working in their sweats. That’s why the digitally native men’s apparel brand, founded in 2007 on the premise of eliminating “khaki diaper butt” with a more flattering silhouette, is…
ARF Calls For Action To Save Ad-Supported Media, Doesn’t Say What It Is
The Advertising Research Foundation asserts the industry is at a “crossroads,” which isn’t exactly a first time.
ispDigital Acquires ‘Cognitive Marketing’ Firm Happyfication, Integrates With Digilant
Rodes family-controlled ISPD says it will help marketers “leverage data-driven marketing across all media.”
During a Pitch, Be Prepared to Ditch Your Draft
Editor’s note: This piece is part of our Columnist Network series, which explores the tactical thoughts and actions from Adweek’s community of high-level experts. Today, Havas Creative’s Stephanie Nerlich prepares for a rush of new business pitches this fall. Below, in her own words, she shares her experience of the planning–and spontaneity–that has helped her…
‘We are the new type of competition’: How Stagwell Group’s CEO Mark Penn is going after the holding companies
It’s been six weeks since The Stagwell Group closed on its merger with MDC Partners to create a larger holding company that deals in marketing and media services, as well as data generation, polling, PR services and SaaS products. And Mark Penn, the company’s chairman and CEO, says he sees the company as a more modern version of a holding company, with a focus on growing its roster of SaaS products and updating its media arm, Stagwell Media Network, to incorporate first-party data generation that’s not cookie-dependent.
Just this morning Stagwell announced it is merging its digital- and performance-first ForwardPMX into its Assembly media agency, in a bid to blend more modern, tech-driven operations with its more legacy media buying and planning shops. The merged Assembly will report into Justin Townsend, ForwardPMX’s CEO who also oversees the merged Stagwell Media Network, which houses all of Stagwell’s media-side agencies.
Penn spoke with Digiday about a number of areas in which Stagwell expects to grow, although he repeatedly cautioned that it has only been six weeks since the merger’s close. The following Q&A has been edited for space and clarity.
Since the merger, what’s working really well, what’s going somewhat well and what needs to be adjusted?
It took a little longer than I was hoping. The biggest unifications occurred in media where we’re really able to put something together now that manages $5 billion of mostly online media. It’s an offering that spans from the top of the funnel in terms of performance marketing down to the loyalty and CRM and influencer marketing, and everything in between. But we’re still in the early stages.
In bringing media assets together, where do you stack up against other media networks?
We’re in the midst of bringing together these companies, products and people in the most appropriate way. If you compare us to GroupM, it’s so much more offline media, and S4 is much smaller than we are, frankly. They don’t have the full suite of capabilities we have.
We’re in the final processes of testing our Cue product, which is the consumer understanding and engagement model. It’s going to be the flagship of our media and data offering. Everyone’s asking, ‘What kind of first-party data do you have?’ We do millions of consumer interviews … which give us a fresh, current database that is not cookie-dependent and allows us to feed that in with first-party data and maybe some limited third-party sources in order to create an audience targeting and acquisition tool that is going to be state of the art. It’s going to be our answer to the other media networks out there.
We’ve taken this model to a number of clients and they’ve been blown away by the simplicity and accuracy of its operation. [Penn declined to identify the actual clients, but Beth Sidhu, Stagwell’s chief brand and communications officer, said they include a major online women’s retailer, a fitness tracker, a DTC meal carrier, and a major investment house.] We wanted to see how it performed across a number of verticals.
What about the rise of non-traditional would-be holding companies getting into agencies? How much does this type of competition keep you up at night?
We are the new type of competition. Stagwell started six years ago with the idea of what would happen if you went digital-first. If you’re really going to be a success in marketing today, you have to get the right ad to the right person at the right time. If you’re just thinking about the right ad, that’s limited — that’s like the old holding companies. If you’re going to just get it to the right person, then OK, you’re a targeting company. And if you’re [thinking about] the right time, you’re a media-first company or an online content provider.
That’s how we’ve built Stagwell, deliberately with a plan in mind that’s very different from the way the traditional holding companies were built. But I’m also not just taking one slice of the pie and saying that’s the whole pie when it’s not. It’s not by chance that Accenture put the head of Droga5 at the head of its company. If you don’t have creativity and digital, you’re not really able to satisfy marketers to scale.
You’ve talked about SaaS offerings as a growth area that sets you apart from other holding companies. How?
My plan here is to build out a significant SaaS component of the business across our research, ad-tech and comms-tech products. That’s going be a significant focus of mine in the coming months. We’re out in the market with some of the first sales on the PRophet AI tool, which tells you how your [press] releases are going to do. This is what makes us a real challenger in the marketplace.
What I felt was important in the merger was to get to a real scaled platform where we could reach up to larger and larger clients, and larger contracts, and not be pigeonholed as one small piece of the business … to become a real challenger against the Big Four [holding companies WPP, IPG, Omnicom and Publicis].
The post ‘We are the new type of competition’: How Stagwell Group’s CEO Mark Penn is going after the holding companies appeared first on Digiday.