Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
Digiday is running a series of video interviews with agency leaders on how to build the modern agency. The series is made possible through the sponsorship of Videology, a video advertising platform.
Kenny Tomlin doesn’t have the typical pedigree of an agency CEO. He led a software development company in the 1990s, then spent four years working for Wal-Mart. Rockfish was founded in 2006 as a cross between a software-development firm focused on usability and an agency.
At a time when many agencies are exploring new business models, Rockfish was begun with the structure that it would both work for clients and develop its own technology. That’s borne fruit in the form of digital-couponing platform CouponFactory, social-media monitoring tool TidyTweet and a half dozen other products. WPP Group bought Rockfish in August 2011.
“It was a part of our DNA from day one,” Tomlin said. “It’s more of a challenge for an agency with a long history to say suddenly, ‘Hey, we’re going to build products,’ and people to believe them. You have to have some history of showing that’s part of your culture.”
See the full interview with Tomlin below. Follow him on Twitter at @kennytomlin.
More in Marketing
‘Nobody’s asking the question’: WPP’s biggest restructure in years means nothing until CMOs say it does
WPP declared itself transformed. CMOs will decide if that’s true.
Why a Gen Alpha–focused skin-care brand is giving equity to teen creators
Brands are looking for new ways to build relationships that last, and go deeper than a hashtag-sponsored post.
Pitch deck: How ChatGPT ads are being sold to Criteo advertisers
OpenAI has the ad inventory. Criteo has relationships with advertisers. Here’s how they’re using them.