As president of Denuo, Publicis Groupe's new futures practice, Nick Pahade and his team are changing the way the industry thinks and acts now and into the future with a focused eye on digital, interactive and the evolution of traditional media.
Pahade brings to Denuo more than a decade of leadership in the industry. He has created digital marketing solutions for clients such as Reebok, Nokia, GlaxoSmithKline, Masterfoods and Western Union that differentiated his clients' brands, drove innovation in the field and produced results. Prior to joining Denuo, Pahade was president of Beyond Interactive Inc. and managing director of Mediacom Digital, part of WPP's Group M and Grey Global Group. There, he directed strategic partnership initiatives, business development, client services and operations for the company across the globe. Previously, Pahade was also co-founder and chief strategic officer of digital agency Beyond Interactive and led the acquisition of the agency into Grey Global Group in 1999.
Pahade recently chatted with me about the launch of Denuo.
Brad Berens: Is Denuo a full time job for its members or something else?
Nick Pahade: A full time job. This is a committed entity with its own P&L.
March 26 to 28, 2006 in Lake Las Vegas, NV
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Learn more now! Berens: How is the Denuo Group different from what Publicis had before with the group of you spread out throughout different entities? And how do you expect to be working with the rest of Publicis?
Pahade: Denuo is a first. This is unprecedented in the industry, both as a business model and as a group of individuals (most have successfully launched a business, and each is known as an expert across the industry). Maurice (our chairman) has deployed this team because he wants us to help our clients get to the future first.
We're not a media agency or a creative shop. We refer to ourselves as a plug-and-play team. We'll be able to collaborate with companies across Publicis, and hopefully outside as well, as client needs dictate and when it is advantageous for everyone involved. We are already working with a variety of the Publicis entities and expanding our external relationships.
Berens: Are there any counterparts that you see elsewhere in the advertising world? Would you, for example, compare yourselves to Isobar within Aegis?
Pahade: I believe there are good digital companies out there. And consultancies. There are companies who clearly compete with bits and pieces of what Denuo is about. But when we did our internal competitive analysis, we didn't find any competitors who were totally focused on anticipating the future and actually shaping it.
Our Ventures component is clearly unique because it allows us to align with the media owners of tomorrow-- those who are shaping the touchpoints of the future. We can help bring those media to life and generate first mover opportunities for our clients in the process.
We are also an incubator of new thinking and skill sets. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great digital shops out there, but that's not really our remit.
Berens: What exactly does the Denuo website mean by a "futures practice?" Moreover, why is this the right historical moment for such a practice?
Pahade: We envision ourselves as a hands-on think tank, and we exist solely to help clients get to the future first. One of the main focuses of our group is to anticipate and respond to trends in digital, interactive and other evolving traditional marketing strategies. We also help foster new technologies and bring them to the forefront-- technology and concepts from startups that have big ideas for media. We give them intellectual capital; they help us render a vision of how people will use technology in the future.
Denuo is appropriate now. Someone needs to champion the future instead of waiting for it to happen. With fragmentation of media and new technologies making it more and more difficult to reach consumers, we know it's a challenge for people in these marketing positions to navigate. Clients are looking for navigators. We fill that gap.
Berens: Here at iMedia, we're paying a lot of new attention to games, video and mobile. So much so that we've started a new Summit called Breakthrough which focuses on emerging marketing platforms. What do you think will be the biggest new growth channel for marketers in 2006? 2007? What about five years out?
Pahade: Gaming for now, as it is truly mainstream, but the fun has just started! It's really the blurring and meshing of all things together -- video, gaming, mobile messaging, content portability, social networking, user-generated content and games, et cetera -- that make this industry, this life and this job interesting. It's when these all come together that you'll find the biggest opportunities-- one, two, five years from now.
Berens: You mentioned social networking and user-generated content a moment ago. To my mind, one of the challenges for more traditional marketers when dealing with these things -- or blogs for that matter -- is learning to accept that the marketer cannot completely control the brand identity. Another way of putting this is to say that JWT's Jeremy Bullmore maxim -- "Many marketing companies, and even more of their marketing advisers, pride themselves on their ability to build brands. But of course neither group builds brands, because brands are built in people's heads" -- is now more urgent than ever with new media playing such a role. Do you agree? How might Denuo work to change attitudes about brand identity among its clients?
Pahade: Agree 100 percent-- frankly, I don't think the marketer was ever able to control brand identity 100 percent. If they were, this job would be easy! User generated content, word of mouth, blogs, et cetera absolutely help to build brands but of course in a less "controllable environment." The question I ask is, how much research do we need to see to prove that these things all help influence perception and purchase decisions? I am sure we can all think of examples in life where the opinion of the expert wasn't necessarily as important as the consumer, your friend, someone you admired, et cetera.
Denuo embraces these new opportunities to reach the consumer and interact with them, rather than running away from the challenge. I think many marketers are beginning to understand that the consumer has much more control today than ever before, and that they need to change their attitudes about brand identity. They just aren't necessarily sure how to do it.
Berens: Earlier, you described Denuo as "an incubator of new thinking and skill sets." That's fascinating. Can you be any more concrete about the kinds of skills and thinking you seek to develop?
Pahade: An example of this is our ventures practice. Publicis has traditionally had an interest in developing relationships with new ventures through Tim Hanlon and Tom Tercek, who are both a part of Denuo. The foundation they built is central to our mission. If we are going to help our clients get to the future first, it's important for us to work with companies who are inventing that future. Often people think they can get to the future by just imagining it. That may be true to a certain degree, but in order to truly succeed, we need to be in the trenches with the people that have the technologies or platforms in the marketplace.
We need to know who is out there-- what they are offering. Start-ups and new technologies have lots of potential and opportunities for investment dollars. But you need to understand how the business side of our industry works. The tech community doesn't offer the level of consumer insight that we do, and they might not necessarily have the skills to really articulate to the marketing community the relevancy and significance of what they've created.
So Denuo invests, but we also offer thinking and intellectual capital in return for the stakes. We serve as guides and translators and editors for the start-ups, helping their products to be more ad friendly, and we help them communicate to marketers. We strive to create a synergistic partnership with those that are truly helping to drive the future. We learn from them; our clients benefit, and we help them create a better offering and help them communicate it so that it is relevant to those that need to know about it.
Berens: Recently, Joseph Jaffe -- a longtime friend of iMedia -- published his book, "Life after the 30-Second Spot." Many marketers -- particularly interactive marketers -- have been predicting the demise of TV advertising for years. What do you think of this, and to what extent will television be a part of Denuo's practice?
Pahade: TV is not dead. It's going through an evolution. TV as it exists today is going through a reallocation of ad spend based upon where today and future consumers engage with content. Again, as I mentioned earlier, it is really about the meshing and blending of content and where and how you engage with it that makes things interesting. Denuo is really excited where that screen -- sitting in your family room or in your pocket or anywhere -- is going.
Berens: Finally, in a recent iMedia interview, Prof. Don Schultz of Northwestern suggested that in parts of Asia marketers start with interactive and then move into traditional media. Do you think that such will ever be the case here in the U.S.? Are online and interactive media central to Denuo's practice?
Pahade: I think there are some examples of that already. Many new brand launches and ecommerce-driven companies have focused around media that tend to be more efficient and offer impact or ROI faster to build up marketshare. Then, as competition increases, market saturation, seasonality, brand perception changes, et cetera, they expand to other media that may offer greater reach or different consumer segments.
We do believe that the world is aggressively moving to an IP-based infrastructure, and that is the core of what we do, but what's next is also what we need to be paying attention to.
Brad Berens is executive editor for iMedia Communications, Inc.
