The face of the new digital entrepreneur
By Jodi Harris

We’re moving past the recession, but digital now faces an even bigger challenge: an innovation crisis. Starcom CEO Lisa Donohue discusses how a secret weapon will help the industry thrive again.

Though it’s only been two years of managing recessionary business issues, it seems like a decade must have passed in terms of the changes weathered and obstacles overcome in the digital industry. Yet the need for change is what digital was founded on, and for those nimble professionals ready to embrace the opportunities it can bring, today may be nothing less than a renaissance for advertising innovation.

“It’s our time to seize the day,” says Lisa Donohue, CEO of Starcom USA, during her keynote presentation at the iMedia Agency Summit in Austin, Texas. Donohue contends that with clients reassessing the new industry landscape and realizing the increasing need for new ideas, models, and partnerships, digital is tragically mired in outdated structures, processes, and policies that are creating an innovation crisis.

The good news, says Donohue, is that the industry already has the power to steer and control the crisis, and just needs to place more of a priority on strategies that embrace change, reward experimentation, and let creativity lead the way for others to follow.

“The recession really was good for our industry,” says Donohue. “For all the pain it caused, it gave us a clean slate. We can push the reset button on our industry. We can begin from square one where we can reinvent ourselves.”

In the social space, Starcom is adjusting by learning how to keep pace with customers, rather than focusing on what other players in the space are doing. She feels that agencies must first build the necessary tools to understand the consumer mindset and to know what behaviors they are changing. She also believes that to develop these tools and adaptation strategies, change first needs to come from within. “We need to eliminate labels between creative and media, between campaigns and advertising, between traditional and digital,” she says. “These limit us. We need to be more open source. We need to pull information from both within and outside of our own companies.”

The new world order requires new business models

Donohue believes there are four Cs that should be the focal point of the flexible, creative business models that the digital agency of tomorrow needs to be founded on: community, conversation, content, and currency.

Community. We must renew our focus on how to join, build, and communicate with groups of people, based on how those people are doing this in their own social circles.

Conversation. Agencies need to work harder to find and participate in a natural connection with consumers.

Currency. We need to be taking a good, hard look at how we earn loyalty and attention through a dialogue. This applies both to our consumer outreach and among the employees of our own organization.

Content. Content will be the key to the future of digital. We need to stop thinking about our jobs as a means to create advertising and start thinking in terms of how we can create content and messaging opportunities.

Learning to embrace change

Donohue says she takes a look at the capabilities Starcom needs to build to address the future on a daily basis. “The recession allows us to focus on this. The limited resources we’ve had to work with are empowering us to be more creative.” Donohue also stresses the need to consider data to be an aid that can unlock insights into our creative mission, rather than an impediment. “We can use it to prove our worth, rather than explain our value [to clients],” she says.

In order to drive this shift in perception, Donohue contends that we need to develop a new entrepreneurism — and that it all boils down to talent.

But is talent also in crisis in digital marketing? While there is certainly no shortage of innovative minds and creative problem solvers, the industry needs to start fostering business cultures that let entrepreneurial minds take the lead in the industry’s forward momentum.

“Our industry has operated in a walled garden for too long. We hire people from the same old pools of advertising programs. Job descriptions haven’t changed much in 10 years. But walled gardens don’t last forever. Smart people chafe at being restricted,” says Donohue. “What we do isn’t a mystery. We need to invite others in to see how it works and create new ideas.”

How we need to change

Donohue points to three key areas where change should start: structure, culture, and recognition. We need to break down the old world hierarchy to make room for talent to thrive. We need to move from organizational cultures that focus on job descriptions and segmented responsibilities to positions that allow for shared experiences and responsibilities. And we need to shift from recognizing the accomplishments of our team members through financial compensation to a system that provides a variety of meaningful rewards.

“Company leaders are not determined by title or length of service, but rather by how they respect and support each other within the organization,” Donohue says. “It doesn’t all have to be about the money. The next generation of leaders will be about learning and experience.”

Donohue closed by reminding Summit attendees that no matter what the specific reason was that drew them to this industry, there is a commonality: the need to be challenged intellectually and creatively. And this vital quest to realize the possibilities of imagination is the lens through which we must view tomorrow’s digital marketing industry.

“At the heart of this, we are all problem solvers. We want to find creative solutions to the business challenges we face. Now, we need to take those same skills and apply them to our industry itself,” Donohue says. “In leadership, you have to model the behaviors that you seek.”

Jodi Harris is senior editor at iMedia Connection.

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