‘This performance mindset can just explode’: iProspect’s Gonzalez talks about building future media models

By Michael Bürgi

Last week was a big one for the performance side of the agency business. Omnicom Media Group’s purchase of performance marketing agency Jump 450 came a day after longtime Publicis Media executive Danielle Gonzalez left to join Dentsu’s iProspect agency as North American CEO.

Gonzalez takes over just nine months since Dentsu folded its Vizeum media shop into iProspect to form a full-service media agency with a particular focus on performance. She will oversee some 1,000 staffers across the U.S. and Canada, but will continue to work out of Chicago, where she had spent the prior 25 years working in various Publicis roles, including at multicultural agency Tapestry, followed by tenure at Starcom and, most recently, chief client officer for all of Publicis Media.

She spoke with Digiday just two days into her new role that has enabled her to “lead a very large organization and to create a team … built for the future.”

The following Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.

You’re taking over iProspect as it’s morphing into a full-service media agency. How much work is left to round it out?

The vision for the new iProspect is essentially taking the best of the performance work the team has been doing for so many of our clients, and the best of the Vizeum brand work we were also doing. Now we’re relaunching iProspect as an end-to-end media offering in service for our clients, but with that performance mindset at the fore.

This is one of the reasons I joined the company: this is the future way that we’ll do marketing. When you think about the pressure all CMOs have on accountability, when you think about being able to track sales, to understand what levers to pull to optimize and grow, this performance mindset can just explode and help us with all the pieces.

Think of media as a ladder. Most people start at the top of the ladder with strategic work and general thinking about consumers, then work their way down. We’re actually starting at the bottom of the ladder and climbing our way up. We plan to do that full service, but now we’ve got real behavior, real sales data and real information about consumers to build the top part of that ladder.

Merkle has a lot of that data as it has grown within Dentsu. How will iProspect work with it?

[Dentsu, IPG and Publicis] all have such wonderful ways of harmonizing that data within their systems. Merkle has strong capabilities, it’s very secure data, which makes me happy to know it’s been collected in the right ways and used in appropriate ways. It’s our team’s ability to unleash the power of that data, and that’s where iProspect is very well positioned.

You’ve left Publicis after 25 years amid a lot of change. Did those changes make you say it’s time for a change?

I can say nothing but good things about them, I love that company, I love …read more

Source:: Digiday