Wix
Wix VP of creative Eran Gefen.
- Eran Gefen co-founded and ran Y&R Interactive, the biggest Israeli division of ad holding company WPP, then left to start his own agency in 2009.
- Last year he sold that agency, Gefen Team, to longtime client Wix and became the software company's VP of creative.
- Gefen said he left the ad industry because it demands a closer relationship between marketers and customers.
- Unless agencies and holding companies find a way to work more closely with their clients, he said, they won't survive.
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With ad agencies shutting down left and right, many ad pros are asking themselves if they should go to the client side in the interest of job stability.
For Eran Gefen, the answer was a resounding yes.
Gefen founded and ran Y&R Interactive, the largest Israeli division of holding company WPP, before leaving to start his own agency, Gefen Team. Last May, he sold Gefen Team to Tel Aviv-based web development company Wix and became its VP of creative.
"Both changes, from Y&R and then to in-house, mirrored changes in the market," Gefen told Business Insider.
Leaving the holding company world behind
Gefen said the traditional agency model, which relies heavily on commissions from TV ad buys, no longer serves the client or the consumer.
So in 2009, at the height of his career, Gefen left the world's biggest holding company to launch his own agency. Instead of using vendors like publishers or production companies and billing clients for those services as traditional agencies do, he charged clients directly.
That approach made Gefen's services more expensive, but his break came when Coca-Cola hired him to expand the "Share a Coke" campaign, helping produce 2 million unique Diet Coke bottle labels.
Gefen went on to win more clients like Frito-Lay and Wix, creating Wix's 2016 "Kung-Fu Panda" Super Bowl ad.
An unexpected sale to a fast-growing tech company
Wix CMO Omer Shai strongly believed that brands should handle their creative in-house. Having spent his entire career in the agency world, Gefen agreed, though he saw agencies moving further from brands.
Those factors led Gefen to sell to Wix after an extended conversation with Shai about working more closely with the company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Gefen's team of about 20 was integrated into Wix's 300-person marketing department.
The appeal of leaving the agency world is that creative pros won't have the burnout they experience by working at an agency, with the nonstop pitching they have to do. The downside that creative pros fear is that they won't fit the culture and will miss the variety that comes from agency work.
Gefen said ad agencies have to work more closely with clients
In buying its agency, Wix is an extreme example, but Gefen said ad agencies would move closer to their clients in the coming years, by working out of their offices and exclusively on their accounts.
"The days when you can jump between different projects and clients are over," he said.
These transitions take time. Immediately after the acquisition, Wix leadership had its newest employees learn about its products by talking directly to customers, answering support calls, and even responding to Facebook comments.
Gefen said this training was necessary in part because Wix employs nearly 2,000 people across several divisions, like customer relationship management (CRM) and ecommerce, that function like separate companies.
He said agencies - especially the massive holding companies - will struggle to survive if they don't get closer to their clients and those companies' customers.
Being acquired has allowed for a new kind of relationship between Gefen and his former client. For example, he recently walked down the hall to show an ad's script to Wix's in-house lawyer - not for legal advice, but to get another perspective on the creative.
"She loved it," Gefen said. "This is an extreme example of getting closer."