Transforming the Future: Key Takeaways from this year’s Global Conference
With a packed agenda in San Francisco last week, we share some of the key takeaways from the Dentsu Aegis Network Global Leadership Conference. This year’s theme was focused on Transforming the Future through People & Data.
1. Setting Records with our Financial Results.
- Dentsu Aegis Network outperformed the peer group (WPP, IPG, Omnicom, Havas, Publicis) for the fifth year consecutively with organic gross profit growth of 5.7% (5.1% for Dentsu Group)
- We increased our footprint in digital overtaking traditional media for the first time with over 50% of revenue taken from digital in 2016
- We were the most acquisitive company in the peer group, making a record number of deals to accelerate our strategy to become a 100% digital economy business by 2020. At 45 acquisitions & investments, this was the equivalent of a new deal being signed every week.
- We made the largest acquisition in the industry with Merkle Inc. joining the group and significantly bolstering our data strategy & capabilities
“The Group is well placed with a clear strategy and plan, robust revenue growth and strong momentum; we expect to continue to outperform the market in the years ahead.”
— Toshihiro Yamamoto, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dentsu Inc
Read the full financial report here.
2. Data makes us Better.
As society enters the fourth industrial revolution — where technologies blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds — the way we live, work, and relate to one another will fundamentally change. Every industry will be disrupted, creating new challenges and opportunities.
For all the tremendous change that is happening in our industry, the ultimate purpose of marketing remains the same; to match a company’s products and services to the people who need and want them. Until now, the communications strategies used to make those connections have been based largely on imprecise audiences using relatively small samples of data, often annual surveys.
The proliferation of digital, mobile and internet-enabled devices means there is now a vast amount of data about people’s behaviours. This allows us to gain more knowledge and wisdom about how brands can better meet people’s needs and wants. In today’s digital economy, most consumers are using multiple devices which means a significant challenge is to recognise the person, not the various short-lived cookies or the individual devices. We need to solve this industry issue to make more effective decisions about how, when and where to communicate.
To maximise this opportunity, Dentsu Aegis Network is focused on people-based marketing. This means executing media strategies based on data about actual individuals, rather than proxies, like panels or cookies. In other words, moving from marketing to people we don’t know to people we do know.
With the acquisition of Merkle Inc. along with this people-focused data strategy, Dentsu Aegis Network is best placed to lead the industry and truly innovate the way brands are built.
3. People make us Different.
“In this context, “People” is about doing things differently, which is at the fundamental heart of how we describe innovation.”
— Jerry Buhlmann, CEO Dentsu Aegis Network
As Peter Drucker famously claimed: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This couldn’t be more accurate when it comes to activating our ambitious people-led data strategy. The collaborative nature of the network allows us to deliver innovation more powerfully and more responsibly.
In a session led by HR Director, Valerie Scoular, the importance of culture and collective intelligence was discussed while our core values helped reiterate our ways of working and approach to innovation:
Agile — Collaborative — Pioneering — Ambitious — Responsible
Meanwhile, CEO Jerry Buhlmann re-emphasised the commercial value of our culture & values given the positive results that approach drives throughout our business. These values also bolster our acquisition strategy, ensuring we recruit the right agencies & people to live by our values. 70% of brand leaders stay with the network post earn-out, a clear sign of a healthy culture.
4. Respect the Craft.
Data is fundamental to our creative strategy, and alongside it, as Jean Lin CEO Isobar called out, “We must respect the craft”.
Jane Lin-Baden CEO Isobar APAC, went further to claim “Consumers and brands will need great ideas now more than ever”, as technology propels us into the future where data & noise are exponential.
While technology & data provide key support, direction and measurement for our creative approach, great ideas require even more creativity to break through the noise and provide customers with true, resonating relevance. To demonstrate true creativity in action, Gordon Bowen, Founder & Chairman mcgarrybowen, used the power of Star Trek references to tell the story of great creative.
5. Society as our Stakeholder.
With the World Economic Forum estimating $100 trillion dollars of value by 2025 for business & society through the development of the digital economy, it is our responsibility as a network to ensure that that growth of wealth is spread across both business and society.
Nigel Morris, CEO Americas, led a session launching Society as an official Stakeholder of the business alongside our People, Clients & Shareholders. With increasing interconnectedness and a need for shared values for both business and society, we’re continuing to activate our 40,000 people across all 140 markets to drive drive better digital empowerment across both our business and society.
Leaders from across the network then shared a number of inspiring examples where a society-first mindset has driven impressive results both for the business and for society. In France, Dentsu Aegis Network through its digital & creative agency Isobar, delivered Elliot, a campaign to support children with autism, which is now used as official pedagogic material by the French Ministry of Education, while a law is actually being studied in Parliament as a direct consequence of the campaign.
Other impressive campaigns were shared from the Female Foundry for supporting entrepreneurs in APAC to The Code Schools Programme in the UK, demonstrative of a social responsibility mindset already alive and kicking across our global network and driving real benefits for society as well as business.
Sarah Hofstetter, CEO 360i, finished the session with an important message: that people want to come to work to make a difference, that a social responsibility mindset is not just good for business & society, but for employees too.
By adopting a society-first mindset, the network can, and is, driving real change for the better. Society is therefore one of our key stakeholders going forward.
“Business has to take responsibility for its share in providing more value to society and having society as a stakeholder.”
— Jerry Buhlmann, CEO Dentsu Aegis Network
For a summary of the Global Conference highlights, watch the video below:
