Dentsu Aegis to become 100% digital economy business by 2020
Dentsu Aegis Network sub-Sahara Africa is aggressively refocusing its attention away from traditional advertising, as the global network presses towards its goal of becoming a fully digital business by 2020.
The revelation, which is a wake-up call to traditional media owners to brace up to digital innovation, was made by Dawn Rowlands, CEO for Dentsu Aegis Network SSA, during the just concluded Africa region Innovation Roadshow organized by the network in Lagos.
Rowlands explained that this doesn’t mean Dentsu Aegis is shutting down its investment in traditional advertising by 2020, rather it is a march towards complete automation of its systems and processes. “Every aspect of our business will be highly automated. We are change-managing the people and the talent within our Organisation,” she said.
The shift towards digital has seen the network’s traditional advertising investments drop significantly over the years, with print budget dropping by 40 percent every year, in the last five years. Traditional media owners have been no called upon to reinvent their operation in order to remain relevant.
“They need to reinvent themselves. They need to start thinking about how they engage with consumers, what type of content they create and they really need to spent time and energy to research these areas of their businesses. And as I said, we do have a lot of information that we can help them with,” Rowlands said.
The innovation summit which equally held in Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Ghana was part of the agency’s efforts to future-proof the network and its partners against the digital disruption sweeping across Africa.
The roadshow which brought together clients across several sectors of the industry, local and global media partners addressed the need to think more disruptively and drive automation in all aspect of media operations.
“This summit is part of that, on how to think more disruptively and drive automation in what they do on a daily basis, so the business is going to change dramatically. Digital disruption is happening so quickly as data becomes cheaper, a lot of people are moving to online TV and it will be more rapid as data becomes cheaper,” Rowlands said at the summit.
Denstu Aegis transition towards automation has seen the agency boost its digital revenue significantly. At the moment, about 60 percent of the network’s revenue comes from digital, and in the next three years, it will rise to 80 percent Rowlands has said.
Dentsu Aegis Network is made up of 10 global network brands: Carat, Dentsu, dentsu X, iProspect, Isobar, mcgarrybowen, Merkle, MKTG, Posterscope and Vizeum and supported by its specialist/multi-market brands.
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