After more than 40 years in the industry, Rishad Tobaccowala has seen it all or at least most of it. Upon being named Industry Legend by the Ad Club, Tobaccowala shares some advice for those starting out as well as a prediction for where the industry is headed.
If you’ve been in or around advertising for the past four decades, you’ve probably heard the name Rishad Tobaccowala. Throughout that time, he has served at the upper echelons of Publicis Groupe as Chief Strategist and Growth Officer and Chairman of Digitas and Razorfish. Today, he is a speaker, teacher, advisor and author of Restoring the Soul of the Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data.
He is a trusted advisor to Publicis Groupe as well as executives at Fortune 500 and 100 companies and private equity organizations. And now he is the recipient of the Ad Club Industry Legend honor. Always the mentor, Tobaccowala shares some crucial advice for all of us.
What is the biggest professional accomplishment that put you on the road to this achievement?
The biggest moment was in the mid-1990s, convincing the ad agency Leo Burnett to do two things that were relatively dramatic for their for them. One was to start a new company focused on a new area where we had no clients – a business called interactive marketing. And second was, in order for it to be credible and world class, to take the name of the door to not call it Leo Burnett. We called it Giant Step. It’s 1993-1994 so that was a differentiator. Until…
