Chief Content Officer,
Omnicom Media Group
Claudia Cahill’s brainchild is called the Final Front, an event designed to give the content sales market a similar structure and scale as the Upfronts give to TV and the Newfronts give to digital. The Final Front puts content creators in front of top brand marketers for a day of pitches-- all custom-created with never-seen-before concepts created specifically for the event. Marketers “bid” on the ideas, and following the presentations, brands and producers sit down to develop the concepts.
Now in its fourth year, the event has expanded from a single-day, single-agency event to a three-day holding company initiative that saw more than three dozen leading global and national advertisers come together to hear presentations from many of the top entertainment brands and content producers in the industry.
From the outset, Claudia saw the benefits of making it easier for Madison Avenue and Hollywood to cooperate on the creation of branded content and bespoke entertainment programming that can benefit an advertiser. Generally, branded content projects take more energy and longer development time than standard advertising. However, Claudia Cahill believed that her Final Front idea could help overcome content’s biggest obstacles, while providing Omnicom’s clients an opportunity to make decisions on big creative ideas.
She was right. Some of the deals created included a collaboration between Walgreens and NBC for the network’s “Red Nose Day” broadcast; an agreement between Vice and Gatorade for a sports-video series; and an alliance between Chobani yogurt and the PopSugar digital-media outlet.
And now, the Final Front is being replicated in numerous international markets.
Claudia Cahill is a native of New Orleans, a place that she calls “one of the original innovative cities in the world.” She adds, “Being in content carries an immediate connotation of being an innovator. After all, the reason you go into content is to tell a story that traditional media can’t. It gives you the flexibility to do deeper on the story and go directly to the consumer.”