Oli Saunders is Global Head of Addressability & DCO, Wavemaker. We asked who his digital hero is.
Who is your digital hero?
I think ‘hero’ might be a notch of apotheosis too far, but I have plenty of professional respect for the digital accomplishments of Chiara Ferragni, the original Fashion Influencer (blogger) from the early 2010s, who started The Blonde Salad and embraced the sharing of her editorial content across social media channels.
What has she done to win hero status in your eyes?
Chiara triumphantly set the standard for running an ‘integrated agency model’ as one single amateur content creator.
That’s to say that she, and her former partner Riccardo Pozzoli, were industry pioneers in acting as talent, creative ideation team, photographer/videographer, editor, copywriter, designer, producer, business development / commercial / legal team, media agents, and more.
She boldly risked a prestigious academic seat at Bocconi Law in Milan based on entrepreneurial and creative intuition, yet there was no world-class business model to follow in that discipline of ‘blogging’ (outside of some niche Scandinavian operations) and it wasn’t at all obvious that there was a market in the gap, let alone a gap in the market.
Nonetheless in 2015, Harvard Business Review authored a case study on Chiara’s commercial approach and success, which grew still considerably from that point. In a fashion market tightly controlled by traditional publishing giants, Chiara’s approach led to a reshaping of the industry, elevated her persona into that of a digital celebrity, enabled the spawning of millions of lookalike Influencer careers, creating vast commercial opportunities for media, and set a very high bar for competition. That type of media paradigm shift doesn’t happen often, and her (& her team’s) professional execution typifies the shift. I consider that highly impressive.
How has her heroism helped drive digital?
She unearthed a rich vein of new inventory and attention from which our industry massively benefits. It wasn’t just a disruption of the fashion industry, but I think the introduction of the “famous influencer” model to the world. For a while in those early-to-mid 2010s, formerly unknown influencers garnered considerably more digital followers than uber-celebrities who were then young to the emerging social platforms.
It’s not an accident that it was an Italian who helped to do this, as I’ve long observed a curious fixation on the cult of personality surrounding senior leaders in Italy, be they politicians, businesspeople, sports stars, or entertainment figures. The ‘social media big bang’ of which Chiara was a figurehead hatched a major industry with enormous inventory & placement opportunities for brands to reach consumers, through partnerships, collaborations, paid media opportunities and more. It would certainly have happened without her, but she was there first, best, AND with commercial acumen, and to my mind the combination counts.
What is the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
Would it be too niche to focus on the hygiene of naming conventions and consistent taxonomic nomenclature? Regardless, I think that requires a miracle, not a hero.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
’m not sure it’s heroic, but I joined the digital industry after 12 years in Investment Banking.
It proved to me that you’re not born into one thing, that you can do several things in your professional life, and better still, your experience from one career can translate into an advantage for the next. It has been a fascinating journey. More personal achievements to follow, I hope!
