Raj Das, Digital Practice Lead comments on Digital Talent trends
CONVERGENCE
The world of senior digital talent is rapidly converging across vertical industry segments and geographies. This is especially true in the realm of technology, marketing, and digital. Bacardi as our global client is a great example. We are experiencing real time how the next Global Brand Leader of Grey Goose (Bacardi portfolio company) can have the background in Spirits, Beverage, FMCG, Techno logy, or High End Fashion Lifestyle company. This is not an accident of nature or random occurrence. Skill sets required to be an effective senior leader in the world of marketing, digital, and technology now have great commonalities. Days are numbered for brands or agencies that are recruiting senior talents from solely their immediate circles of influence.
As senior operating executives in our past careers, we take an “out of box” approach to identifying senior talents. We bring our unique experience in running large global organizations to bear upon our talent hunt. Our clients value us for our unique perspectives on their business strategy and market position. We first focus on our client’s long-term business need, then find talents that can enable them to achieve their business objectives.
MILLENNIAL EMPOWERMENT
Millennials have become a very important segment of today’s workforce. They hail from the generation of iPhone’s, Snap Chat and Pinterest Their notion of working is intertwined with their lifestyles. They demand flexible work hours, constant feedback from peers and bosses, and an engaging office environment where they can freely express their views on world topics. Their focus is on a proper balance between work and personal lives around their families and friends. At the same time, they want to build their future financial security while demanding long-term loyally from their employers. Brands and agencies that dismiss the needs and desires of the millennial population are doing so at their own peril. They must embrace flexibility to develop their future generation of star leaders. Competition from the new generation of digital companies (who claim to nurture a work environment where millennials feel comfortable, motivated, and inspired) for these talents is intense.
HUMAN CENTRICITY
The way marketers and consumers interact has been continually evolving over the last century. Brands used to have total control and sway over how and what would be exposed to their customers. Content was the king in that paradigm. Then the world evolved to a socially networked mesh of engagement and interactions. In this world of “demand pull’ vs. “supply push;’ consumers became the center of gravity. They could now pull content and commerce from the search ecosystem of Google or socially networked recommendations and preferences of their spheres of influence from Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. We believe that the world is now evolving to a new paradigm of context and algorithm-based engagement between brands and customers. Proactive and perennial evaluation of data gathered from the behavior of consumers on their smartphones is now essential to engaging in conversation and commerce in our brave new world today. This shift in brand/consumer engagement behavior requires a new breed of transformational leaders who have disruption at the very core of their DNA This is the primary reason I have merged my strategy consulting practice with the retained search business of Buffkin/Baker, to intersect the new realities of the global marketplace today with senior leadership challenges.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raj Das serves as a Partner and the Head of the Digital Practice at the Buffkin / Baker New York office. Previously, Raj was the Founder & CEO at POM Partners, a global digital media incubation and acceleration firm. He is a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program, Harvard’s General Management Program and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with an undergraduate degree in Finance and Multinational Management.