Arnold R&D Lab

By Marissa Shrum

If I Ran It, ad agencies would be full of tangential specialists, interdisciplinary exploits, and random (but useful) projects not billed to clients but built for people!

If you didn’t know, Innovation is officially the new buzz capability for ad agencies. Back in the day, strategic planners were the ‘hot thing’ that agencies used to get new business. With innovation, agencies are creating revenue for themselves and products for the people — not just clients (which is why, if done well, it can be a good thing!). Arnold’s CCO, Pete Favat, is running the lab with Ryan Habbyshaw (25) and Todd Vanderlin (23)…Get it, boys!

“It’s like a lot of manufacturing. Some people say we’re in the service business; we’re in the product business, the entertainment product business. In a manufacturing company there is an R&D budget that Apple or Microsoft or anybody is going to put billions aside for. But ad agencies don’t do that. In a lot of ways I would question that. Is your agency investing in areas that are extremely nontraditional? We’re putting up our own money to find these ways.”

This is Favat’s second “non-traditional hire” - he hired a cognitive scientist to run an intuition analytics department last year. Seems like a smart executive…

Thanks, Laura

via Creativity Online

Photo credit: Anthony Shea



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