Making its 10th anniversary this year, Canvas is now made up of 600 staff members, with a complete funnel offer that recently heavy the data and performance chops – but in a way that balances the need for wisdom of the upper combinations and low -end prospects. Woolmington explained that the approach canvas takes to maintain and cultivate this balance.

The following conversation has been modified for clarity and space.

What works and does not work in the reception of the brand and performance?

The problem with our industry is from bottom to top. The atomization of channels, platforms, technology, techniques, said that we have simply added more and more. And we had to – the artisanal skills of each discipline have developed in an exponential way. Essentially, what happened is that everyone has the means to justify their existence. In a world of acquired interests, which gives you objective and neutral truth?

And customers have also developed exponentially: performance units, social units, internal units, AI units, personalization layers. We want to be from top to bottom and bottom, to meet us in the disorderly middle.

This annoys me when people appropriate the language of saying: “Oh, we are a performance agency.” Well, are we not all in the field of performance? Or “we are a content agency”. Well, please postpone. You are a microcosm of content.

The arrogance of agencies is that they have long left the field and are really [about] execution. This is why it is from bottom to top. They earn money, and they were their worst enemies, because they are not paid for intellectual capital – they are paid for manufacturing.

So how do you strengthen the brand or performance when you are a full funnel? How do you know where to emphasize?

We have to kiss and strike. Embred and strike means that we must be brilliant in our specialized fields, but we must train all these specialized areas to understand that they are part of the story of the results. We have a process now, which is called a roadmap for results: many micro-results, medium level results and, ultimately, there is the ultimate KPI. The CEO of the company or the result of the CFO – not the type of Wrishy Washy.

We double the results. It is a very rigorous roadmap process propelled by tools, powered by audience platforms, fueled by everything that everyone is talking about. But at the end of the day, each client says: “We are overwhelmed by the data. We do not know who to trust (including Google, by the way). ” What we need are these data storytellers.

What is a data storyteller?

Data storytellers are a combination of a business manager and an analysis manager, who can speak following C, knows how to speak of an organization, but also includes all the allocation techniques below – and they do not necessarily have to be a Data Scientist. They must obviously understand, if you take a commercial objective, how do you translate this into each of the results? How are you the Sherpa on this data narration?

We are overwhelmed by data, but where are the ideas of this data, and how are these data points together to contribute to the ultimate objective? It is not a fucking dashboard. We have all the dashboards of the world. A slide celebrates that a CEO used in a presentation of the board of directors was a broken Ferrari. Everyone claims to have the Ferrari. But there are not as much Lewis Hamiltons.

How does the remuneration part work with customers?

What I have learned over the years on integration – it is confidence, respect, but it is also the greed of money. If you withdraw money from the table… What are these bonus incentives? I said once to a customer, we did a expectation contract, and I said: do you know how each of the people on your team and the agency team is bonus?

Do they know the answer?

It was the blowing spirit. Almost everything was in opposition to integrated work and working in collaboration. And yet, everyone at the front said “collaboration”. When you really looked at their bonuses, it was a bonus in your discipline and in your technique. There was not even, like 50%, if you work like a big teammate.

Obviously, people hunt money, but they also hunt because, you know, they love people with whom they hunt, yes, and by the way, different people have different skills in the hunting technique.

What else do you need to change? And where does the industry go from here you want to be part?

In a very rapid order, the first wave of change was discovered. The second wave of change was the digital era. The third wave of change was technology. The fourth wave of change is AI. And I think there is a fifth wave of change. As we moved to the platforms, while we were going to digital, we live in the data era. But I double on the analogy of Ferrari. This machine is incredible, but a driver must drive it 180 miles on time. I think it will be a new breed of individuals at ease to live in the data era.

This fifth step will be incredible people. So, build a really strong culture where people want to come to work, but they will feel agitated that they can really contribute to change in industry.