Corporate marketing is changing so much that it might seem the next generation of chief marketing officers could come from the IT departments or another line of business, but count David Jaye among those who are grateful to have spent considerable time on the agency side first.
The CMO for The Weather Company, which was recently acquired by IBM, reflected on his early career — which included stints at FCB Global and Digitas, among other shops — in a recent video interview with Agency Spotter. He said the best way to lead and develop a brand started with serving one as a third party partner.
“It gives you a breadth of experience that’s very difficult to get on the client side,” he said. “Being able to do the agency work enabled me to travel the world and get exposed to so many different businesses. The amount of assignments I had while rising through the agency, the complexities of the questions being asked — it just offered me an incredibly broad base and confidence in my ability to learn.”
On the other hand, Jaye cautioned against working in an ad agency if all you focused on was treating client briefs in a traditional way. That’s why he got immersed in the emergence of data-driven targeting in the late 1990s.
“Agencies were already transforming,” he said. “People that were literate early in digital were able to get exposure and progress through the ranks very quickly.”
In his current role, Jaye said he was part of a team that’s trying to grow The Weather Company from 250 million users to one billion users. That comes with a unique set of challenges. The Weather Company’s content isn’t universally translated, for example, and he suggested the brand may not have the same resonate around the world as it does here in North America. That means the way he works with agencies today is highly tactical.
“Where we will use agencies is on very specific campaigns,” he said, adding that his group is very hands-on in brand architecture and brand narrative, for example. “I feel very strongly that internal organizations, the marketing organization, needs to own the ability of telling their story. You can’t farm out your positioning.”
