The course is set at WIRZ. For change. The reasons are manifold. The most important factor is the need of companies for holistic solutions in marketing and communications. Where once the agency only came on board at the end of the value chain, i.e. as the executive body of a company's planned communications strategy, especially since the outbreak of the pandemic, clients have been coming to WIRZ with problems that are much further up the chain. "How can we grow? Where does our target group move? Which channels are relevant for which target groups? Where do I place the marketing budget most efficiently?"

The answers to these and many other questions are now being worked out by the advertising clients together with WIRZ. And because it takes far more know-how to work holistically with clients, WIRZ has restructured itself in the last six months and brought new specialists on board to drive WIRZ's course forward with their knowledge.

Dr. János Heé is an expert in the fields of digital transformation, growth strategies and change management. He acts since the beginning of the year as Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer CMIO, is part of the management team and co-owner. Since April 2021, Kathrin Jesse has also been part of the management team and co-owner. She acts as Chief Strategy Officer. In her position, Jesse is to further expand the agency group's planning expertise and put together a dedicated strategic consulting offering. Co-CEOs Petra Dreyfus and Livio Dainese have thus completed their management team. Both are pleased to have such proven experts on their team.

"Now we ignite the rocket"

It's about holistically addressing customer challenges in a market that is changing rapidly. If you want to produce measurable results, you need data specialists. With Datalogue, WIRZ has brought in a company that describes itself as a navigator in the world of data-based marketing and sales. They combine service areas that would otherwise require a great deal of effort to coordinate and network. Insights from analytics and consulting dovetail Datalogue with technology and marketing for maximum impact. The company works autonomously on its own projects, but is brought into the team when needed. These teams are put together according to the needs of the customers. They are always interdisciplinary. And the customer also sits at the table. This ensures good cooperation at eye level right from the start.

The transformation from a creative agency to a 360-degree full-service consultancy is actively shaped by everyone, and everyone contributes their own expertise. In a form of open-ended work, people test and measure and learn until it becomes clear how the client's problem can be solved. This way of working is also known as Agnostic Creativity. The client is involved and can see exactly how the path to the goal will turn out. And the goal is in almost all cases: Growth. Perfecting the Customer Journey. Solutions are needed that WIRZ will be judged by later on

Kathrin Jesse describes it this way: "We are responsible for getting the campaign on the road and making it work." When testing, measuring and learning, it often becomes clear that processes in the customer journey are sluggish and not designed to be user-friendly enough. "Growth hacking" is a marketing tool here that generates resource-efficient growth. János Heé gives an example: "A customer's website was designed to guide the end consumer to purchase in six steps. We questioned these steps and were able to reduce them to two. The conversation rate increased significantly." Bottom line: growth by streamlining processes.

Kathrin Jesse knows that the end consumer has become more uncompromising in recent years. "If there is no immediate added value, they click away," she says. And this clicking away runs through the entire customer journey; there are so many touchpoints at which the end consumer can decide whether to stick with it. Jesse sums it up this way, "There's so much happening so fast in so many different places at once, it makes companies call us and say, hey, we seem to have a problem somewhere, look into that please." Then the work begins. And it's done at all levels so that the end user can experience a seamless Journey. That's how a business can grow. With so much data, strategy and consulting, doesn't creativity fall by the wayside?

"We solve business problems with the power of creativity".

This is WIRZ's purpose and answers the question of the place the creative process occupies in the structure at WIRZ: a decisive one. Creativity is still the DNA of the agency. The term is simply interpreted much more broadly now. For the creative process, he says, it's helpful to know in advance what formats you're working into. The result is that you don't burn up resources, but can brief in a targeted way, says Livio Dainese. It's much easier to develop the right idea if you know the target group's insights. Inspiring them and strengthening loyalty to a brand requires knowledge.

Without this, a campaign fails with the target audience. "We want to offer our customers only the best," says Petra Dreyfus, "and what we can't provide ourselves, we get elsewhere." At Datalogue, for example, but also at Webrepublic, an agency specializing in digital marketing. With the collaboration BoB (Best of Both), clients can be served all-around with creative brilliance and digital expertise. Very successfully, as the new campaign for Yallo shows. BoB was already successful in 2021 with Migipedia and for WWF. Datalogue and Webrepublic complemented each other in their digital expertise.

The course is set, the train is rolling, the direction is clear. Livio Dainese sums it up: "We work across all disciplines without boundaries and see ourselves as a collective of consulting, strategy, marketing and creation. Because only when the best talents work closely together do we get the best results."

This article first appeared in the m&k print edition 1-2/2022.