Nigel Morris: Digital is Dominant - Innovate Or Die

Digital isn’t just a disruptive change agent anymore — it has emerged as the dominant economic and cultural force shaping society today.

That’s according to Nigel Morris, CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network Americas & EMEA, who spoke at an Advertising Week session Wednesday.

While digital convergence has been talked about for years, Morris said that “digital and the rules of digital have become the dominant force in the last 12 months.”

That dominance has unleashed a battle between “incumbency and new entrants in every sector,” Morris added. As a result, he said, just about every company that isn’t a startup “has to think like a turnaround.”

“Innovation at scale,” he said, “will be vital to the success of the economy as we evolve over the next three to five years.”

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And achieving scale is more complicated now. “We used to be able to see it,” in the pre-digital world, Morris said, when the number of factories, fleets of trucks, inventory and other tangible items defined scale. In the digital world it’s harder to see and more difficult to measure. It’s less about “what we have” and more about “who we reach,” he said.

The new digital world, Morris said, is an interconnected, “demand-led” world. Unmet consumer needs and numerous insights about consumer mindsets can be deciphered by parsing Big Data. The problem for many big incumbent businesses, he said, is that they aren’t structured “to take in or act on Big Data.”

And marketing can be at the center of that interconnected world, orchestrating ties between consumers and businesses. “More and more it’s happening through media,” he said.

Most of the capital being invested in the economy today is going toward digital technologies. That said, a focus on the human touch is critical. Product development has to be “laser focused on people and how technology has changed them” and vice versa.

“Behind every data point is a real live person,” Morris said. The implication for marketers: “No black box will tell us what to do.”

As the industry becomes more precise in reaching the right environments, the more critical it becomes to develop messaging that keenly resonates within those environments. “People are emotional,” he said. “The message has to be helpful and relevant.”

Digital media has narrowed the space between the points of engagement and transaction, said Morris. Success requires planning for an interconnected ecosystem in real-time. That requires much faster decision-making. Many more “kill or go” decisions have to be made in a matter of days, and sometimes hours, he said.

4 comments about "Nigel Morris: Digital is Dominant - Innovate Or Die".
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  1. Susan Rowe from Rowe Media, October 2, 2014 at 7:59 a.m.

    Nigel, great speech. I totally agree that many agencies are not equipped to handle big data. Susan

  2. Brad Stewart from Molecule Inc., October 2, 2014 at 9:09 a.m.

    Really nice to see someone talk about digital, big data and what ultimately drives people ("people are emotional") ..... Bang On! Great article.

  3. Tom Goodwin from Tomorrow, October 2, 2014 at 9:21 p.m.

    I loved his presentation and agree with his spirit and in order to get headlines you have to make bold claims.
    But let's take a step back, LOADS of things are changing but not EVERYTHING. If you make butter, or sell deodorant or shampoo and you are not a startup or a turnaround, you should still be embracing data and digital, but let's not think your world is changed overnight. Some people and some products are more similar than they are different. We don't need a mobile app, an iBeacon, interactive outdoor for every brand.

  4. Howie Goldfarb from Blue Star Strategic Marketing, October 3, 2014 at 7:53 a.m.

    You complicate this so much. Too much jargon. The fact is you have to separate DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY from DIGITAL MARKETING. Getting more content/media etc on demand across all devices is the first art. The second is to figure out how to get 5/15/30 sec pre-roll video commercials across more content. Even print. With the failure of social and almost all digital ad formats proven as a big sink of client money that customers don't want...go with what they have at least accepted if not embraced as a form of acceptable and non-intrusive marketing....the TV Ad.

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