Since taking over as president of Cossette’s English operations, Dave Lafond has been busy infusing digital expertise across the company and been on a hiring spree of late.
Back (l to r): Mirza Sakovic, Soumik Sen and Owen Milburn; middle: Yulia Danilova and Kevin McHugh; and front: Heather Kinoshita, Lizzy Dabous and John Fung.
The moves started early in the winter when Lafond – who has deep digital roots himself at Publicis Modem and Proximity – hired Andrea Cook and then Jason Chaney.
In recent weeks he’s added to the digital bench strength with the addition of eight more junior hires from mostly digital specialist agencies like Proximity, One Method, Critical Mass and Tribal DDB. Joining Cossette are digital copywriters Heather Kinoshita and Owen Milburn; digital strategists Kevin McHugh and Lizzy Dabous; digital strategist and analyst, John Fung; technology lead Soumik Sen; digital project management Yulia Danilova; and digital designer Mirza Sakovic.
The additions represent new hires for the agency, and while not the direct result of any new client wins, do reflect the increasing amount of digital work for the agency including digital-only assignments for P&G and growing digital demands from General Mills, said Lafond.
“We are not building out a separate digital group. We are building teams that can solve our clients problems and more and more digital is becoming an important role,” he said. “Our goal is that 100% of our staff will understand digital.”
The intent is to bring more digital expertise across the organization including more “thinkers” (strategists and analytics experts) who can deal with clients earlier in the planning process, he said.
“We’ve never had an analytics function so we are expanding in new areas.”
