Born: Miami, Florida-USA
Worked in: Primarily in the US—Florida, Georgia, New York, but now increasingly on a plane.
In his 16 years in Marketing, Scott Hagedorn has excelled as a digital expert, brand planner, marketing strategist, direct response guru, agency leader and entrepreneur. No wonder he’s so well suited for the brave new world of the Annalect Group. Scott is the engineer behind a daring effort to reformulate the principles of media measurement. However, the Annalect Group just might succeed in building the future infrastructure of the agency.
Now just one year old, Annalect Group, Omnicom Media Group's digital data and analytics organization, is focused on delivering “better consumer insights, more precise audience targeting and more effective media investment strategies.”
As CEO, Scott has brought together over 400 digital and analytic experts from across several OMG divisions — ranging from Media Analytics, Business Intelligence, Tools and Dashboard Systems, Econometric Modeling (Brand Science), Search to its Demand Side Platform (DSP) trading platform—to create a new, strategically focused, data-informed marketing platform. By aligning and leveraging the consumer and media data from Omnicom Media Group's $2 billion in digital investments, Annalect is driven to deliver a higher level of consumer insight, while aiming to increase the efficiency and impact of client media investments.
According to Scott Hagedorn, “Social spaces, earned media, digital channels, new marketplaces – the concept of media has gone through a revolution, creating an imperative for re-inventing the fundamentals.”
Prior to taking on his role at Annalect, Scott was US CEO of PHD Network where his strategic vision and leadership helped PHD win two of the most hotly contested media pitches of 2010, GSK and Gap, making PHD one of the top agencies to watch in 2011.
Scott has had a number of past roles at Omnicom — from Managing Director of OMD East, a role that was redefined with a stronger focus on digital and analytics. During his tenure, OMD was awarded Global Media Agency of the Year and won top awards for digital creativity.
Scott also worked as the US Director of OMD Digital, supervising all digital efforts across OMD Digital's US properties in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The big job that brought him to New York was Chief Interactive Officer of Omnicom direct agency, Rapp Worldwide.
Perhaps the most notable part of his early years was how he arrived in the advertising business in the first place. Right out of school from the University of Florida, Scott started The Famous Flying Barracuda Co, which made fishing lures. To promote the company, Scott starred in his own TV commercials. Fortunately, he was spotted by Ben West, founder of Atlanta agency WestWayne, who offering him a job as a brand planner. He took it.
He worked at WestWayne for 7 years until he co-founded Breatheinteractive, which WestWayne bought after it grew to $125 million in billings.
In his Crain’s New York profile of the “40 under 40,” Scott admits "I always thought I would be a marginal slacker, dabbling in music with a quasi-decent job."
This may have been the only vision that Scott Hagedorn got wrong.