Born: Washington, Kansas- USA
Lived in: Mexico, Germany, Spain and the US.
Worked in: 44 countries in the past 5 years. Scott averages 180,000 miles of travel each year.
After more than 20 years in the business, Scott Tegethoff is regarded as a “media guru” and possesses a unique understanding of the industry in general and UM’s offerings in particular. As President of Global Product, he ensures that the agency continues to deliver best-in-class services – including planning, buying, analytics, and communications planning – to clients around the world.
Additionally, Scott continues to lead UM’s Coca-Cola client relationship, as he has done for the past three years. He oversees UM’s global relationship with the brand across 65 countries.
What role does innovation play in your marketing strategy today?With today’s changing communication market, you innovate or die. Media marketing requires change every day in every country. Doing what you did yesterday is no longer enough.
What is the biggest challenge you face in applying innovative thinking to international projects? The biggest challenge is moving teams out of their comfort zone via influence vs. dictate. Around the world, consumers and the media are changing faster than anyone’s comfort level, so I need to help them see new ways of working, learning and listening.
Dictionary definitions aside, how would you characterize innovation in the work you do? Innovation is the way we mine consumer insights, it’s how we use media in new ways to drive connections between brands and consumers, innovation is about procuring the most effective media at the best price and innovation is the way we hire and organize teams.
Name an innovative idea or business solution for which you are most proud. Coca-Cola came to Universal McCann in India asking for new ways of mining consumer insights, creating experiences for consumers and developing measurement plans to know what works. Scott and the UM team pitched the assignment and beat out the current agency of 15 years. While this one win influences 2 billion Indians, Scott has also won 26 out of 35 country pitches for Coca-Cola in the past 5 years.
Why do people see Scott Tegethoff you as an innovator? People look to Scott for the latest innovations for Universal McCann. They know that he’ll fly anywhere, anytime to help them develop custom solutions to their clients’ business challenges. We find ways to improve consumer insights, partnerships with the media owners, collaboration with creative people and new ways to measure what we do to know what works best. When clients need innovation and reinvention, he’s sent in to “fix it and inspire the teams to work in new, innovative ways”.
Any other interesting aspects to your international background? Scott loves talking to new people, he’s never happier than when my passport is in hand and he’s taking off to go somewhere new. Last year, he went to work in Almaty Kazakhstan, Cebu Philippines, Kiev Ukraine, New Delhi India and Rio de Janeiro Brazil.
Scott tries everything: Sugary raw chicken desert in Istanbul (an Ottoman delight), twice baked goat brains and mare’s milk in Kazakhstan, Chinese farmhouse cuisine in Shanghai, grasshopper tacos in Mexico City. Scott can’t imagine what it would be like to live any other way. Innovate or die.