iProspect's Jeremy Cornfeldt: What Brands Can Learn from the DTC Boom

Jeremy Cornfeldt pictured at top chief executive officer of iProspect US the digital performance marketing agency within Dentsu Aegis Network has been tracking this phenomenon especially closely As a result iProspect recently bolstered its offerings by acquiring MuteSix a creative media and data agency designed for DTC brandsMediaVillage spoke with Cornfeldt about what he finds most compelling among the DTC trends as well as what established brands are learning from DTC success storiesDavid Berkowitz How far do you see DTC going Are consumers going to buy every single type of product from a different supplierJeremy Cornfeldt What39s really interesting is that DTC players because they39re not encumbered by legacy infrastructure don39t need to have enormous market share to be successful They can chip away and have 1 to 2 percent market share and figure out how they either continue to maintain that or methodically scaleObviously there will be those that don39t survive and MuteSix has worked with companies that haven39t made it amp8212 which means they39ve developed a keen ability to understand which ones are going to be successful in and which ones aren39tBerkowitz What else propelled you to acquire MuteSixCornfeldt We39ve been built to handle really complex clients from Microsoft to retail clients to financial services organizations such as Bank of America What39s missing and what gets so much attention today especially with a lot of our legacy established clients are the DTC brands Digital has lowered the barriers to entry for these DTC brands to promote what they doBerkowitz Are your larger enterprise clients learning anything from DTC brands Cornfeldt What they39re seeing is that when you39re developing creative for social in particular it has to be different You have one to two seconds to grab somebody39s attention People are typically looking at it on a smaller screen If you get their attention then you can have something that39s really immersiveBerkowitz So social is critical for DTC brandsCornfeldt These DTC clients get started on social primarily on Facebook the creative options are great and they39re engaging You can showcase a lot of information The media is targetable and inexpensive and they39ve really built their businesses that way MuteSix is enabled to capitalize on thatBerkowitz That must be another benefit of having MuteSix within your groupCornfeldt Yes While DTC brands are smaller and their budgets are smaller they39re having a major impact in terms of the marketing space and in terms of disrupting our clients Working with smaller clients like that has always been challenging for an agency like ours As we look to diversifying our client portfolio that was one of the things that led us to MuteSixWhen we started to really dig in and understand more about their agency we saw that they have done an amazing job at bridging the gap between creative and media where they don39t even see them as two separate offerings With these smaller DTC companies they have to be able to produce creative quickly do it inexpensively test and learn fail fast and find what works MuteSix built a formula for success around this They have a studio in the office where they can shoot creative and have things ready within a day which is somewhat unheard of in the creative spaceBerkowitz How does MuteSix fit structurally within iProspect Cornfeldt We are being very deliberate in not integrating the organizations MuteSix will stand alone Our models are different We have about 850 people servicing 85 clients MuteSix has 140 people servicing more than 270 clients Their setup is more about volume of clients On the flip side we will be identifying areas where we can integrate with each other where we can share learnings and potentially some servicesBerkowitz What else is exciting you in the market right nowCornfeldt amp160Personalization is a big area for us And then we continue to push the envelope in terms of voice given our strong SEO background Voice is already delivering value today because we39re learning how it can play a role in helping our clients39 organizations qualify people early on in the buying processClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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iProspect's Jeremy Cornfeldt: What Brands Can Learn from the DTC Boom

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David Berkowitz

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iProspect's Jeremy Cornfeldt: What Brands Can Learn from the DTC Boom

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