Razorfish names new Australia ECD as global creative head warns of rise of consultancies
Daniel Bonner
Digital agency Razorfish has promoted from within, naming Sandor Moldan as executive creative director for the Australia as the company tries to counter the growing influence of the big consultancies as competitors to agencies.
Razorfish global ECD Daniel Bonner, said that the appointment of Moldan, a veteran of the agency who joined in 2006, to oversee creative in Australia, was an important signal in what he described as a challenging market.
He replaces Christian Behrendt who departed the agency earlier this year after a three year stint and has moved to a job as creative lead with Google in Germany.
“I think Australia faces challenges in every market, more and more clients are bringing things in-house and there are more competitors and the consultancies are getting involved so now you are competing with the likes of the Deloittes and the Accentures,” Bonner told Mumbrella.
“Also, now talent has more choice in the market to choose from we are competing for that as well.”
His comments echo those of Grey Worldwide ECD Nils Leonard who also warned of the rising influence of consultancies in the advertising space.
Bonner said the future of the digital space would be based around a series pillars that would help to define the business.
“We are offering four things and that starts with customer experience and innovation,” he said.
“It will be ubiquitous commerce – to transact on any device at any time. Content will sit in the distribution platform. Even the most basic form of interaction will be a value exchange. The fourth will be the element of strategic interaction – what time of day it is, where you are, so the interaction becomes contextual.”
Bonner said that there was still a lot of education to be done at marketer level, but that agencies were expanding their client relationship lines to take parts of the business that had traditionally not been part of the conversation.
Sandor Moldan
“It’s not just the marketing department, it’s about talking to the digital office and the CIO. As the gap between marketing and product closes the two can no longer operate separately. You can’t order a pizza with an emoji without the two being married.
“We are not just here to build brands and the return on investment is not something to be ashamed of or something that comes at the expense of creativity.”
New Sydney ECD Moldan has been with the agency for a decade working with brands including Samsung, Qantas, Holden, BT Financial Group, Unilever, Pepsi and Xbox.
Bonner said that his appointment was recognition that in a market where talent was hard to finds Razorfish had managed to develop leaders internally.
Simon Canning
Great appointment and well deserved. He’s one of the best in the industry.
Congrats Sandor!
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Congrats Sandor!
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No doubt a thought leader in joining the dots between creative and tech. Well done Sandor!
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