Benoit Cacheux is Global Chief Digital Officer at Zenith. He started his digital career 20 years ago at a start-up digital agency (Grey Interactive / Fullsix). He set up P&G’s European website for teenagers, Swizzle.com, worked for agencies including AKQA, Modem Media / Digitas, Publicis Modem and Organic, and was Regional E-Commerce Manager at InterContinental Hotels Group.
Now we find out who his digital hero is.
Who is your digital hero?
Kevin Power, Group MD, Conversation LAB (South Africa and UK) – a born digital agency that has been partnering with global clients since 2012.
I worked with him during my time at a leading digital agency Modem Media and subsequently at Publicis Modem (after its acquisition by Publicis Groupe). Kevin was impressive at the time as a client lead and has gone on to become a great entrepreneur.
What has he done to win hero status in your eyes
Kevin learnt his trade in London at the big agency networks (BBDO and Publicis) before returning to South Africa to set up his own agency in his hometown of Durban.
Cape Town and Johannesburg are the agency hot spots of South Africa. Not Durban. People told him if he wanted to succeed, ‘he needed to get out of Durban and stay in digital or get out of digital and stay in Durban’.
Well, he proved them wrong by building a global digital agency from 4-70 staff in 5 years (growing and nurturing local talent) and spearheaded performance marketing in SA with strong credentials in organic and paid media. After 4 years he returned to London to wave his ‘Proudly South African’ flag where he now delivers excellent digital results for leading UK businesses – all still mostly run out of that same Durban office.
How has his heroism helped drive digital
Kevin’s model at Conversation LAB Group of agencies, which include Media LAB (a pure play paid specialist agency) and Power LAB (strategic comms and reputation management), has exposed South African young digital talent to a global market of blue-chip brands.
Kevin and Conversation LAB embraced remote working and working from home long before Covid proved its success, and this has meant that Conversation LAB talent and their clients have been connected to a far richer and diverse workforce – to everyone’s benefit.
It’s hugely encouraging to see brands embrace this model by connecting with a truly global workforce and not feeling reliant on a pool of talent in a local area which now opens much wider and deeper benefits. Of course, Conversation LAB has had to deliver results that move the needle in highly competitive global markets…but by all accounts, they seem to be doing that as they continue to grow their international client base.
What is the biggest challenge in digital we need another hero to solve?
Whilst digital has given access to an unbelievable range of metrics, we are still facing significant barriers when it comes to measurement and the true attribution of digital to brand and business impact.
This challenge comes in different forms from being able to analyse the impact of the full eco-system across paid, owned and earned touchpoints, understand true attribution across a range of walled gardens where data cannot be shared and build future proofed measurement solutions in a fast-evolving landscape where critical identifiers such as device IDs or cookies are gradually being phased out.
Finding the right measurement model definitely requires a new digital hero!
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital – Benoit
My career across digital and media agencies combined with client-side experience has been rich with fantastic experiences. My work at InterContinental Hotels Group will always stay close to my heart as I led the deployment of a new ecommerce infrastructure and demand generation programmes across Continental Europe and the Middle East.
We faced huge challenges with the online travel marketplace which was dominated by OTAs (online travel agents) but we launched successfully and built strong foundations for thousands of hotels to thrive and capture digital business.
