Global Head of Marketing Innovation & Global Brand Director,
Havas Worldwide
Jason Jercinovic has been called “a renaissance man in the post digital age.” No doubt, that’s a reference to a career that has included advertising exec, techie, musician, surfer, and an entrepreneur. What better background is there for someone to lead global innovation at Havas Worldwide?
Without question, Jason is not afraid to take risks. He’s also always looking for the next opportunity to utilize new platforms and technologies. He says, “I whole-heartedly believe agencies that allow their employees to invest and tinker with breakthrough technologies will help propel their clients’ marketing strategy forward, ahead of their competition. From augmented reality to new social media platforms, technology is transforming our industry every single day. I’ve made it my responsibility to stay abreast of these developments to ensure our agency can deliver the most forward-thinking marketing strategies possible for our clients.”
One of the business solutions for which he is most proud is the launch of a new service unit called Havas Cognitive, which involves the development of software that leverages the power of IBM Watson to bring intelligence and data driven insight to a broad range of sectors. “Early on we realized that technologies like social, mobile and big data are transforming the way customers expect to engage with brands. By identifying that white space, Havas was able to successfully implant Cognitive solutions within consumer marketing activations and enterprise brands like TD Ameritrade, Red Bull and Adidas. In doing so, Havas Cognitive has enabled brands to embed this success across all lines of business including retail, sports, technology, CPG, fashion, luxury, health and medical.”
Jason believes that one of today’s biggest priorities is having a clear and mutually-understood approach to innovation. He outlines: “We’ve defined the pillars of innovation as brand evolution, ways of working (operation and production), and products and services. The next stage is to integrate this approach into our client relationships to systematically scale and repeat excellence. If we align on these pillars of innovation across creative and media, we can do even more. Togetherness is especially important right now. I’ve been seeing that clients don’t want to deal with various agencies and stakeholders doing many different things; they want alignment. But at the same time, they also want to put a bunch of specialists together in a room to generate the most value. So we need small bodies of specialty that ladder up to a broader company relationship.”
As the Global Head of Marketing Innovation, who better than Jason Jercinovic to provide a definition of Innovation itself? His answer was immediate: “Innovation is the future, and the only way to know the future is to create it. My approach to innovation is based on iteration and evolution. We can't live on the history of our success. We must push for continual reinvention, showing the value of a prototype then test, measure, learn and evolve.”