• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, October 26, 2020

Marketing agency The Shipyard has created a new ecommerce practice designed to create and expand DTC channels for clients.

The Columbus, OH-based agency has tapped its CMO, Lance Porigow to lead the effort with the added title, head of ecommerce growth practice.

The move to formalize the practice — which has been helping clients like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Scotts Miracle Gro do it for years as part of its core offering — follows the decision of two new clients to award its ecommerce remit to the agency. One is eyewear maker Bollé and the other is BrewDog, a multinational brewery with U.S. headquarters in Columbus.

The agency calls its approach “marketing engineering,” which it says unites creativity, behavioral data and performance-marketing strategy to optimize ecommerce effectiveness.

The Shipyard CEO Rick Milenthal says “ecommerce is not only a way to expand D2C sales, it also improves all marketing with an exponential expansion of first-party data identifying new audiences that can be reached through customized creative messaging."

Adds Porigow: "Simply put, selling directly to consumers enables a two-way dialogue with your customers that is yours alone, generating extremely valuable first-party data that can drive omni-channel performance.”

Ecommerce expertise is rapidly becoming table stakes for agencies that want to remain competitive.