Martin Le Sauteur
Martin Le Sauteur has been named president and chief operating officer of Marketel, promising to make the Quebec agency a leader in digital and omnichannel marketing.
Le Sauteur first made a name for himself as one of the co-founders of Nurun, a bleeding-edge interactive agency later bought by Razorfish Global. In 2008 he went on to become president and CEO of performance media platform, Acquisio, in Montreal.
Managing Marketel, the nearly 40-year-old full-service agency that is part of IPG’s McCann Worldgroup, will be a different experience. Le Sauteur began consulting with Marketel about ways to innovate in digital and cross-channel marketing earlier this year. He said after working on media and strategy for more than a decade, coming on board at Marketel made him “fall in love with creative again.”
“My entrepreneur background was more in software in the past few years, but my studies were in advertising,” he said. “The size of the company, the people, where we are today — I feel like I could really make a difference here.”
Le Sauteur will mange all day-to-day operations at Marketel, reporting to CEO and board chairman Jacques Duval. In a statement, Duval said Le Sauteur’s combination of creativity and background in digital media and analytics made him the right man for the job.
“He is an extremely talented leader who brings the perfect mélange of ‘techno’ and ‘creativity,’ which is essential in our industry today,” Duval said.
Le Sauteur said the biggest challenge he sees facing agencies today is gaining credibility in digital. He said many traditional agencies claim to be breaking down silos and working on omnichannel marketing, but few have been able to demonstrate those capabilities to clients.
He said he, Duval and the other member’s of Marketel’s board have been in conversations about the best ways to move the agency’s omnichannel capabilities forward and accelerate its growth. One of the possibilities Marketel is exploring is acquisitions of smaller, more tech-focused firms.
