Chuck Brymer, President and CEO, DDB Worldwide Communications Group, talks to BT's Ajita Shashidhar about reinventing to keep pace with changing technology.
How has the changing communications landscape impacted your business?
Technology has changed our clients businesses and our business. It requires us to create ideas in different modes, in different channels and quicker than we had to before. We have to be able to optimise content in real time, so that we learn from the data and then deliver that in different ways. We have changed the model in which we work. A campaign that would run for six weeks of the year is now turned around 24X7. Without doubt, the speed of technology is reshaping the industry; it is changing the very nature of how companies operate.
How is a traditional advertising agency like yours aligning to digital?
We have made massive shifts in all our businesses to be able to develop ideas that are much more innovative, technologically advanced - much of that is online. We are looking at consumer behaviour differently, using data much more aggressively to target customers and engage with them. Speaking about the advertising business, we dont refer to digital anymore. The ideas we create are media agnostic.
How are clients adapting to this change?
Technology is enabling us to do everything now and most of the companies we work with are well along the path. The biggest challenge today is speed; the ability of a company to adapt to speed. Many companies have suffered because they havent moved quickly enough. Companies that are able to disrupt the industries in which they compete, by developing technology quicker and faster than their competitors, are able to stake claim in that market before anybody else. ~