Hearts & Science Chief Wields Baton Of Change

Scott Hagedorn, founder of the Omnicom shop, believes media agencies need to act as the conductor to orchestrate the complex relationship between creative, data, CRM and technology. By Gideon Spanier

- Gideon Spanier

Scott Hagedorn comes from a family of inventors and entrepreneurs. His LinkedIn page is illustrated with a design of one of his grandfather’s patents from 1947, a bedcover clamp to hold a mattress in place. His father’s claim to fame is that, as a banker, he helped to fund the original World Wrestling Foundation.

The younger Hagedorn already looks to have secured his place in advertising history as the man who invented Hearts & Science, a new breed of media agency fit for a digital world of data-driven marketing and personalisation.

His agency has had a dream start, winning $6bn of business, including Procter & Gamble as its first client in the US in December 2015 and AT&T in August 2016. These brands have bought into Hagedorn’s belief that customer relationship management skills are now the key to making media work.

“We live in an era where CRM as a practice has collided with addressable media,” he explains. “We need to bring a CRM-oriented mindset into the media space.”

The Omnicom shop suffered a setback this spring when it failed to win any of P&G’s business in a review across northern Europe, including the UK, but it is still the envy of most other big media agencies. Arguably its success has prompted WPP to merge MEC, which lost AT&T, with Maxus and to try to turn digital agency Essence into a rival to Hearts & Science.

The past 18 months have been “great and kinda hectic,” Hagedorn says, fresh from winning two golds in the Media Lions at Cannes for “Bradshaw Super Bowl stain” for P&G’s Tide.

It is not just building a new agency from scratch and hiring 800 people that have been hectic. Hagedorn thinks the media business is going through the biggest change in 15 years, since digital advertising first went mainstream. “It’s changing seismically,” he declares.