Alex Lubar, a 10-year McCann Worldgroup government, has joined DDB as world president and chief working officer.
Lubar joined McCann in 2012 and was most just lately president of McCann North America. Previous to that he held regional management roles in Asia and the UK, together with as CEO of McCann London.
He’s the most recent rent below Worldwide CEO Marty O’Halloran, who joined DDB in July 2020 and has since reshaped the inventive community’s world and regional management groups and positioning.
His new gig at DDB marks a return to Omnicom for the chief, who began his profession at RAPP Collins as an account government.
Lubar will play a vital function in serving to the community’s to embed creativity all through the shopper journey, partly via partnerships with different businesses inside mother or father Omnicom’s community globally. DDB has been working with Omnicom Precision Advertising and marketing Group, Omnicom PR Group and Omnicom Media Group on shoppers corresponding to Mars, McDonald’s and Volkswagen as massive world entrepreneurs search for extra built-in options.
“We’re beginning to see much more alternatives opening up for us at a holding firm degree,” O’Halloran mentioned.
Nonetheless, as per Omnicom’s technique, DDB will lean into the ability of its model as a inventive community, pulling experience from across the holding firm in areas like information and analytics, slightly than making an attempt to copy that in-house.
“The truth is, we’d like specialists,” O’Halloran mentioned. “I’m an enormous believer in bringing the specialists in to work alongside my workforce, which may be very a lot centered on the function of name from a inventive viewpoint.”
Lubar will assist shoppers determine which companies they should develop a holistic relationship with their shoppers and use DDB’s experience to infuse creativity all through the method. An instance is DDB’s work with Mars Pet Care, during which the company has helped the model refresh its loyalty program with a inventive strategy all through the pet meals buying lifecycle.
From his world purview, Lubar will even interact in what he calls a “scanning and scaling” technique, during which he can determine pockets of nice work or experience throughout the community and replicate it in different places of work and areas.
“If one thing labored significantly effectively in Seoul, there’s no cause why it could’t work in Brazil or the Western U.S.,” he mentioned. “Plenty of the time our shoppers is likely to be doing nice issues however they want the assistance of a world accomplice to determine and assist them bubble to the highest.”
The technique is a part of a broader push from DDB to collaborate throughout places of work and areas, which Lubar will lead. An instance of this working is with Chillboards, a marketing campaign for Molson Coors in Miami that had enter from groups in Sweden, the U.Ok. and Chicago.
“We have to begin doing issues in another way, being extra environment friendly but additionally smarter in how we function,” O’Halloran mentioned.
As DDB continues to face a expertise crunch impacting all businesses, it’s leaning into its DNA across the energy of creativity to draw and retain workers. However along with coaching and upskilling, it’s additionally searching for “massive image” thinkers from completely different backgrounds as the character of creativity and promoting evolves, O’Halloran mentioned.
“We don’t need to rent simply historically skilled promoting individuals,” he mentioned. “We want individuals with expertise reworking manufacturers, utilizing information, e-commerce, and so on. We wish those who have labored in startups.”
As DDB transforms its choices, it’s additionally wanting towards the way forward for work. Moderately than a mandate from the highest, O’Halloran is pushing the choice to regional leaders to do what is true for his or her places of work and cultures, with an eye fixed towards getting individuals to return in two to a few days per week.
“I feel you need to do it backside up and make individuals need it vs. telling them to do it,” he mentioned.
Lubar likened the again to workplace debate as “placing toothpaste again within the bottle.”
“You’ll be able to’t simply flip the change and anticipate everybody to return to the way in which it was earlier than,” he added. “You need to take a check and study and bottoms up strategy. You see what works and also you lean into it.