Month: July 2022

Chris Hummel, a three-time client of Horizon Media (with United Rentals, Siemens Enterprise Communications and Schneider Electric) and a faculty member of the Revenue Enablement Institute (REI), an advisory firm that counsels companies on ways to achieve growth, will helm Green Thread as president.

“With our previous expansions into e-commerce, analytics, content, technology, sports marketing, and experiential, among other areas, we have created an independent ecosystem that enables us to be a full marketing solutions partner with the capabilities and reach to help companies of all sizes deliver positive business outcomes,” said Horizon Media founder and CEO Bill Koenigsberg in a statement.

B2B “is a space that hasn’t been hasn’t been well served in a lot of the agency ecosystem, in particular, the media side,” said Hummel. “There’s also a real blurring between B2B and B2C… This is something I’ve spent my entire career on by really focusing on the needs of B2B customers, both with the expanding portfolio marketing solutions that arise, but also a number of specialized solutions that we’re going to create and introduce.”

Horizon purchased REI to, in part, help guide technology decisions. “In terms of insights, REI is [a] critical piece of [the formation of Green Thread] because it gives us just that much faster insight into what’s going on, particularly in the B2B space,” said Hummel, who added the idea of Green Thread sprung out of several conversations he had with Koenigsberg. 

REI’s managing director Stephen Diorio, with has co-authored business books with Hummel, will continue to run the institute.

There’s undeniable growth among media agencies looking to expand B2B solutions for marketers, focusing on account-based marketing, which aims to align sales goals with marketing messages more effectively. Content is also an area where B2B is growing up — moving beyond an active LinkedIn page. Hummel said he plans to harness plenty of other Horizon Media-owned units to hit on all these areas with Green Thread.

A McKinsey report released in February confirms heat around B2B but cautions that an omnichannel approach is the most important lesson to be heeded if any agency wants to deliver for clients. The report also notes that client loyalty in the space is a jump ball. “Customers are more willing than ever to switch suppliers to gain exceptional omnichannel experiences,” read the report.

“With the consumerization of B2B commerce, the bar is now even higher,” added Jennifer Stanley, a McKinsey partner and one of the report’s authors. “B2B leaders should anticipate trends and behaviors and respond accordingly to drive customer value, reinforce loyalty, and unlock sustainable growth.”

DoubleVerify, OpenX both used the platform to showcase their efforts while Good-Loop and Sharethrough announced tie-ups with Scope3 – the latest venture from ad tech godfather Brian O’Kelley.

Although, not all were convinced that tech will solve the environmental concerns perpetuated by an industry whose historic primary aim has been to promulgate the benefits of more and more consumption.

For instance, activist group Greenpeace stormed the beaches (quite literally) of WPP’s Cannes Lions-HQ to protest the holding group’s continued association with promoting fossil fuels, a sign of just how much of a hot-button issue sustainability is.

In this edition of our Confessions series, in which we exchange anonymity for candor, Digiday spoke with an industry source and long-standing sustainability advocate who attended — in their words — last month’s “festival of capitalism” on the French Riveria to gauge the reaction of those who championed sustainability long before it became de rigeur.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

How long have you promoted sustainability among marketers, and has it always had such a positive reception? 

I’ve been working in sustainability in advertising for more than 10-years and when I started it was clear that you had people that were being asked to talk about it with brands but it was clear that a lot of them didn’t know what to say. 

There was a lot of greenwashing, false claims and accidental vague wording and when it came to a media perspective, it was clear that a lot of people weren’t thinking about taking a long-term perspective. Generally, there was hostility and a lot of people that worked on the big accounts didn’t want you anywhere near them, but now it’s a big issue. 

In fact, at Cannes this year, I heard one person at an agency that I used to work for, who used to tell me what we were doing was a waste of time, pitch their sustainability offering … I’m all for people changing their minds, but that one was interesting. 

What do you think was the inflection point?

I think one of the big turning points was the mainstreaming of the ‘purpose conversation’ because for a long time sustainability was only for ‘green brands’ and when non-green brands did it, it wasn’t done very well. 

There were some good campaigns from large brands that brought it to the mainstream, but then you’d get some brands that just made it the subject of their advertising in order to get arise out of some people, and that just felt kind of wrong. If a brand is to do something then they have to back it up with things like changing their supply chain which (admittedly) is a hard thing to do. 

We have such a short space of time to bring the industry in line with The Paris Agreement to stop the world from irreversible climate change when you think about it. And when you think about things, a lot of people in the industry aren’t talking about getting rid of their high-carbon clients in these conversations … we’re just dusting when the building is falling down.  

What did you think of ad tech companies getting in on the sustainability messaging this year? 

While it is all welcome, it’s worth pointing out that the industry is funding misinformation and extremism to the tune of billions per year, and that includes climate disinformation. This destabilizes democracy and stops world leaders from getting their act together and addressing climate change in a meaningful way.

You saw a lot of [ad tech] companies talk about decarbonizing their operations, and while all of that is good, what about taking better efforts to tackle misinformation. There are ad tech companies that sign off on social media [as a bona fide media investment] but when you look at the research it’s those channels that are responsible for about 90% of climate misinformation