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Kiran Aditham
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Kiran Aditham is a Business Management grad from the University of Central Florida, Aditham earned his stripes as a freelance writer in music/arts publishing.

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ADOTAS Conversations: Sarah Fay, President, Isobar US

Written on
April 13th 2006
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by Kiran Aditham  |
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So what was the impetus for Isobar? It’s got a meterological kind of a term underlining something related to temperature?

(Laughs) You must know how hard it is to find a real word, when you’re looking for a new company name. Isobar happened to be available globally. But we also felt that it had metaphorical significance to what we try to do. Isobar is one of those squiggly lines on a weather map that connect equal points of pressure. We create campaigns that connect commonalities between marketers and customers. And, like the weather, that’s always changing, it has to continually evolve, it has to be fluid. So we felt it was a good term for us. If you look at the Isobar logo, we’ve made it look like the weather map. So we felt we could really play on that.

Within Isobar, we started off with quite a few brands already. As the [company] evolved, we were making acquisitions. Just to give you an example, One Digital was an early acquisition in Australia. They were four or five times bigger than any digital agency in Australia, and they were very well branded. So, no one was inclined to want to change the brand. In Australia, they were so well known that it was great to say “One Digital is our interactive capability’.

The digital space requires focus and specialization in key sectors, and we want our agencies to stay true to their areas of specialization. We want diversity versus uniformity. We want to keep creativity and innovation alive within the network.

So, we decided that Isobar would be a good connector of all of these services together, in that they can be combined in customized ways. So, for instance, Molecular, which is our [web development/consulting firm], can combine services with iProspect in order to create web sites that are optimized for search. Or, they might partner with Freestyleto create a youth- or innovation-oriented creative site. Molecular is best-of-breed when it comes to transactional, e-commerce, really high-end web experiences. But Freestyle is known for being incredibly innovative. They are EA’s agency of record—they just won a whole slew of creative awards.

Yeah, we just did something on them for the Godfather game…

Oh, thank you, yeah! Didn’t you love that?!

Yes, it was fun.

Freestyle partnered with Ammo, which is our word-of-mouth service to launch that campaign. They distributed oranges in key city locations with the site URL, to generate word of mouth buzz and traffic to the site. Godfather fans know about the symbolism of oranges, and we counted on this to make an interesting story for them to tell others.

Right.

So, we’re allowing all these companies to focus on what they’re best at, what they’re good at, and not become vanilla flavored so that they can be part of the big structure. We want to foster the creativity, the innovation, and the deep areas of specialization by keeping the individual brands. Then, Isobar becomes the connector so we can provide services together across the network.

What is your day-to-day role at Isobar?

I now oversee Isobar U.S. Nigel Morris, in London oversees Isobar globally. I report to David Verklin in the U.S., because all of our reporting is direct-line to geography heads. That makes for better integration across all the services in the U.S. So, I oversee all of the entities in the U.S., which includes Carat Fusion, Freestyle, iProspect, Molecular, Ammo Marketing, and Isobar Mobile.

Managing so many different sectors of Isobar, what are some of the challenges you face? It can’t be a walk in the park, I imagine.

It is complex, as you can imagine. We chose complexity of structure versus simplicity of story, because we think there’s value in it for the clients. But it does mean managing different pieces and then really pushing for integration. A big part of my job is bringing the heads of each of our entities together to discuss opportunities for integration, make sure they have what they need, and facilitate sharing of information across the group. It involves developing systems and making sure that people can connect to information if they need it, or technology as they need it. That’s part of why we’re building technology operations that span the group.

It’s Nigel’s job to pull all the global pieces together for integration, but it’s a lot of work on each of our parts as well. We feel that delivering global digital services is the unique selling proposition for our group. And we feel that we have different capabilities and better resources globally than anybody. Digitas and Avenue A are bigger than us in the US, but nobody’s got the global skills we do.

You were also named in the Fast 50 from Fast Company?

Yes, that was actually the readers’ choice.

Okay. How do you feel about that one?

I feel honored. It was amazing. This was submitted by our marketing team. Apparently, they received close to a thousand entries or something like that. I was shocked that I actually made it to the top 50.

Yeah, the words are pretty flattering from what I’m reading on the Fast Company site. It’s very nice.

Yeah. Again, this is written by the marketing team, but I think from the heart. At the end of the day, it’s a very complex business, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong in this business from the very beginning. Sometimes you feel like you’re taking two steps forward and one step back, and you just have to remember every day—you’re dealing with people, that these are relationships, and they’re important, it’s important to strengthen them, not break them. And just to keep people feeling motivated. I feel like a big part of my job is to have everyone on the team feel energized.

You said recently that 80 percent of all media would be digital by 2020. Is that something you still pretty much abide by?

Yes, I think we’re totally on track for that. By 2007, 50 percent of all media will be digital. And if you look now, at how much TV and how much radio is going digital, and even things like billboards, we are definitely going to hit that milestone. We made that prediction back in 2001, and that was what kept us hanging on. I think there were a lot of holding companies that did pull out any sort of investment they had in the interactive space— pulled back, pulled way back.

Your prediction is pretty accurate from what I can tell. It seems like everyone is speaking in digital terms these days, even the most traditional brand advertisers.

You are so right. And I have to laugh at some of the mouths it’s coming out of now! We definitely went through a period of time where we felt like we the only ones who believed—not the only ones, because certainly the David Verklins were extremely supportive. But down in the lower reaches, we tried to get through to a lot of clients, we tried to get through to a lot of our own sister companies, [but] there wasn’t a whole lot of belief in digital. We were tapping on a lot of doors and windows and asking to be let in.

Like the online Jehovah’s Witness or something like that.

Well, exactly. You can hardly blame people. When you look back to that period, think about what the online experience was like. Most people were on dial-up, they’d encounter blinking casino ads. So it wasn’t an environment where many traditional marketers could see themselves. It took a lot of cleaning up and a lot of bettering of the medium to get us there.

People say it’s not there yet, but it’s getting there. The magic date seems to always be 2010 for every prediction, so I guess it gives a good four-year buffer zone to get to those figures.

I really feel like we are there compared to what it was. I think that we’ll continue to evolve, and continue to work harder, but I don’t have to start every meeting with an education session any more.

Yeah. I guess everything takes time to take shape. But it seems like every week there’s a new advancement. So, it’s pretty surprising.

I remember the days during the “dot com boom,” how I would get a phone call a week from a completely new company with a different concept that would blow your mind. And that’s how it feels in mobile now. I’m hearing from a lot of new companies, different areas of startup—it’s really percolating.



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