With the industry in a constant state of flux, MiC will periodically touch base with leaders who are navigating those changes, along with changes in their own careers. Here, after being in the job for nine months, we speak with CEO of Touché Canada and Omnicom Media Group Samantha Kelley.
Samantha Kelley’s 17-years with Touché Canada, including about a year as president, prepared her to take on the position of CEO of Touché Canada and Omnicom Media Group (OMG) Montreal nine months ago. She joined Touché in 2007 as media strategist and steadily moved up the ladder to supervisor and director before becoming managing director and then president.
“It has been a consistent period of growth, both for me professionally as well as the agency,” says Kelley. “That tenure has prepared me for the role and in many ways the transition to leadership felt quite natural. The difference between my previous role and this role is scope. I went from being very focused on the Touché Toronto office to multiple offices and agencies.”
Her mandate when named CEO was a big one, from the implementation of the agencies’ business and cultivation of client relationships to inspiring all employees and securing the long-term success of both the Montreal and Toronto agencies.
MiC recently checked in with Kelley to get her view on the last nine months.
MiC: What have been the highlights of the job so far?
Under my leadership, the teams are embracing our network in a much more meaningful way. So I’ve been pushing hard on network service agencies, unlocking more capabilities and modern capabilities, some capabilities that go beyond the way we typically think about being a media partner and bringing that combination of both integration and specialization to our clients. We are really focused on new capabilities and integrating that in the way we service our clients.
What are those capabilities?
When you think of the media landscape, obviously there has been a lot of change. Because of that change and how agencies have evolved, particularly ours, we are no longer only a paid media partner. There’s a lot that gravitates around paid media, whether that’s data or technology, advanced analysis and marketing science. There’s a lot that goes into putting together a clever media approach. As client needs are evolving, we are evolving to answer their needs. I can’t think of one client that has not undergone some form of organizational change, business, digital or organizational transformation. Modern capabilities include retail media and our clients are asking for it more and more.
There are so many ways we serve clients that were not on our radar 10 to 15 years ago, like influencers, for example. They’re getting very sophisticated on selecting and measuring and identifying influencers in a way that allows us to have a little bit more sophistication in the use of influencers.
What programs have you put in place?
To answer the needs of clients, they rely on you to not only keep them up-to-date on what’s going on, but to explain what the heck is going on with all this.
We do a lot of education and have a quarterly program for our clients called Data for Breakfast. So, every quarter, we’ll choose a topic that many of our clients are asking us about and we’ll have a conference at 8:30 in the morning, hence Data for Breakfast. We’ll get everyone on the call and spend an hour talking about a trend or a topic of the industry, just one of the ways we keep our clients informed on what’s going on.
What are clients most interested in right now?
Obviously, AI. Everyone’s wondering how you’ve been integrating AI, new ways of working with AI and what’s the role of humans within that AI approach. There’s not one company, whether advertising media or any other industry, everyone’s thinking of AI and how it’s transforming their landscape. Then there are things like broadcasting and a lot moving around in the sports realm.
The habits of young people in Canada, especially children, are changing at a dramatic pace, that the markets are catching up to, as well as the evolution of the Canadian population that has never been so diverse. Understanding how to reach the different pockets of people that are in our population is a key area of interest. How do we find those types of audiences? How do we target those audiences? And more importantly, how do we measure it? All of those things need to be figured out right now.
Do you see any challenges ahead for the agency?
We’re a sizable agency and there’s still obvious challenges. Our focus has always been on creativity and so ensuring that creativity remains top of mind despite the economic context and the temptation to to invest a lot of dollars in performance-based approaches. Creativity will always play an important role when it comes to advertising and marketing. In a world where many people are in cost control mode is an ongoing challenge.
When hiring, are you looking for different skills than you might have a few years ago?
The easy answer is yes. We’re always looking for people that are curious and we invest a lot in our people and education. Being a curious person is kind of where we start. The skills that we’re looking for, obviously people that are data literate but also have an analytical side, that can interpret the data in a valuable business way, and those that can build stories and find insights in data that can be digested pretty easily.
What do you believe are some of the issues the industry is facing today?
Everyone has been focused on the environment. Every network has their tool on how to quantify and optimize to minimize impact on the environment. I do think that there are other areas of responsibility that we should be mindful of, such as Canadian media. I’m a big advocate for it and I think it’s important to protect our culture, to protect our communities and to protect journalism in our country.
We’ve been able over the past several years to demonstrate that Canadian media garner’s results and we’ve run a variety of tests with our clients. So Canadian media is another way I think we need to be looking at responsible media. Diversity in media is an important aspect. The Canadian population in next the 10 years is going to look very different things so we have to prepare for that today. I think responsibility will really help diversity in media at all levels.
