Finding a home for digital in the creative enterprise

By Steven L. Mc Shane, The University of Western Australia

A few years ago, TBWA Worldwide's hired Coleen DeCourcy to fill its newly created chief digital officer position. Soon thereafter she unveiled a new organisational unit TBWA/digital Arts. DeCourcy's announcement came in a decidedly new -school way: she tweeted it .With this unit, TBWA would use its roving band of digital geniuses as a centre of excellence and thereby catapult the organisation's traditional creative talent into the digital age. In De Courcy's words, it was to be ‘advertising at the speed of culture'

What de Courcy and chiefdigital officers at other mega agencies failed to anticipate was the number of barriers. DeCourcy's digital arts group never integrated well with TBWA beset as it was by the typical agency bureaucratic infighting turf wars and therealisation that injecting digital into hulking organisation like TBWA would need more than just hiring a crew of hotshots. According to one source, I don't think everyone in the company had clarity about how it was to work.'

Even the CEO of TBWA worldwide Tom Carroll acknowledged that the digital arts hit some bumps in the road. We played with certain things, we experimented with certain things, andsome of it has worked and some of it hasn't, he noted ‘We get better every day. We learn more every day.'

But perhaps the most important thing that Carroll and other corporate heads learned was that chief officers do not fit easily into traditional creative giants. De Courcy recently left TBWA, as did her counterparts at the creative agencies Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam. None of the companies has since filled these positions with new staff. The remaining digital geniuses have been folded into existing media departments of creating an organisational structure with elite digital SWAT team has come to an end.

Perhaps the main problem with a chief digital officer and a team of digital geniuses is that the unit will never match a sprawling organisational structure. DeCourcy`s Digital Arts group operated at the worldwide level, as part of the Media group operated at the worldwide level, as part of the Media Arts unit. Thus ,financial questions arose when it plugged in to local agencies, such as whether billing for the well compensated digital artists would come out of a local office`s budget .The New York-based digital units also faced resistance from local offices that were wary of losing dint revenue to headquarters. They appeared to ‘parachute in' on project and take too much credit

Another problem was that the digital leaders found themselves pulled in different ways. It was unrealistic to expect a single digital leader to take responsibility for the entire agency`s distal success or failure. ‘It`s just one person' said Ogilvy North America CEO John Seifert. ‘What I think the flaw has been is that too much has been assumed of made of single person is that role', which meant that digital chiefs were just stretched in a million directions'.

Finally, digital was never a centrepiece in the competitive strategy of traditional agencies. Although they wanted greater digital know-know, such all-purpose shops mainly tout their breadth of services, not their digital powers.

‘The reality is there is a degree is a degree to which these agencies feel the need to get digital', said one source, 'And if we remember at their heart that they`re advertising agencies, then there`s probably only a certain degree [of digital expertise] that the need to have as creative services companies'.

This reality seemingly has sunk in. Chief executives claim that their agencies no longer need chief digital officers, and they assert that digital is ‘not all or nothing', in TBWA`s Tom Carroll`s words .'Our guys get closer and closer to doing what [digital agencies do].We get closer every day-and that`s enough'.

In response, Ogilvy`s John Seifert argues for closer digital integration rather than a distinct corporate structure for digital experts, because the rank and file ‘have to be part of this digital revolution'. The chief digital officers who have departed generally agree nothing that ‘Digital need to be so integral to the organisation that it's not distinguished by a group or individual leaders'. In effect, traditional creative agencies are taking a bottom-up rather than top-down approach to their digital transformation.

Case study questions:

1. Explain key concepts, theories and factors that influence behaviour in the TBWA organisation.

2. Relate individual differences in perception, learning, communication and attitudes.

3. Describe the main issues facing managers for example with, organisational structures authority delegation, control and any other issues that can be identified.

4. Investigate organisational behaviour work problems and apply key concepts and theories to recommend solutions.

5. Analyse and report on management decision making in TBWA organisation.

6. Assess how the issues may impact the performance within TBWA organisation.