The Online Marketing Institute has identified the most the largest talent gaps and most in-demand digital skills of 2014. The 'State of Digital Marketing Talent' study consisted of interviewing 747 advertising and Fortune 500 marketing executives to find out what skills their teams possessed and which were most desired.

The Missing Skills: It's striking that talent is perceived to be a 1/3 short of where it should be. This could have a detrimental affect on performance, identify your talent gaps within your company and address them. As an individual, look where the gaps might be in your team and gain a greater understanding of these skills (making yourself more valuable to the company).

It's quite an achievement to be just 8 weeks old and people are championing you as the one to break the Facebook social media monopoly. That's whats happening to new social network 'Ello' though, with the link between the two also stemming from Ello's perceived dislike of Facebook. If you disagree with the Ello manifesto on their website you are then forwarded to Facebook's privacy page (a nice touch!). Their founder, Paul Budnitz, describes Facebook as "an advertising platform not a social network". The Irony is that you were probably made aware of Ello through Facebook. And to find you're friends on Ello, you'll probably have to write a status on Facebook asking them if they're on it!

However, we can't help but think of Diaspora, the once hyped social network. Everyone likes an underdog, but sustaining that takes something really revolutionary. It's early days and therefore it could go two ways, but the fact its exclusive and getting a lot of coverage means it has people's attention, and as a result it hit 50,000 new member requests per hour at some points last week. Tech experts have a mixture of positive and negative views on Ello with our favourite being the Verge calling it “a doomed utopia we can’t stop building.”

Paul Budnitz has a bit of a habit of making success stories from unlikely ventures, potentially a reason his Ello concept is being held in high regard. From a luxury bicycle company, Budnitz Bicycles to Kidrobot, a company that creates art toys and high end fashion accessories (Pharrell Williams is said to be a big fan!), Paul is used to scepticism in his ideas. With the social media space already overcrowded, someone like Budnitz might just be able to discover an unlikely niche.

What really sets it apart it how it plans to make money. Replicating the very successful concept of the iPhone/App store, in which users will be able to completely customise their own Ello with a combination of basic (free features) and add-on features. Its firm stance on being 'anti-advertisement' should be what sets it apart from other social networks.

Quick round up of all the big marketing appointments during July!

David Lewis, currently global personal care boss at Unilever, will take over as Tesco’s chief executive from Philip Clarke in October. Clarke has paid the price for the supermarket’s poor sales, Lewis now faces the challenge of turning around the supermarket’s recent run of sales declines as well as shifting customer perceptions of the brand and creating a clear brand identity. As a result, Unilever has appointed Alan Jope, who is currently the president of its Russian, African, the Middle East and Turkish business to fill the role left by David Lewis. He will be president of its personal care division. 

After a review of their company structure, Britvic has decided that their top UK marketer Jonathan Gatward will move to a newly created role overseeing development of adult soft drink brands and marketing capability. Britvic are currently recruiting for his replacement as GB marketing director role.

Chief marketing officer of TUI Travel and TUI AG Michael Lambertz is leaving the company “to pursue new professional challenges”. This will be a huge blow to the TUI group as Lambertz has overseen all TUI global brands since 2000. TUI Travel and TUI AG are currently negotiating a merger deal with the outcome likely to affect whether this role will still exist.

Mars has appointed Debra Sandler, president of its American division, as chief health and wellbeing officer role. Its new role that has been developed in response to criticism that Mars are marketing to consumers irresponsibly. Sandler will coordinate the health and wellbeing efforts for brands such as Snickers, Skittles and Uncle Ben’s worldwide

ESI Media, publisher of the Evening Standard and Independent, has appointed the current managing director of Metro Newspapers Steve Auckland as its group CEO. He will take the reins of the media company, which shares the same office building as Metro, from Andrew Mullins, who announced earlier this month he was leaving ESI to join Informa.

L’Oreal has appointed its first CMO for UK and Ireland, with former Diageo marketer Hugh Pile take the role. This is part of a structural “regroup” that will align marketing with elements such as social listening and consumer insight. One of Pile's main tasks will be to support L’Oreal’s growth strategy, which aims to reach 1 billion new consumers by 2020.

Facebook has also appointed a former Diageo marketer; Michelle Klein who was top marketer for their Smirnoff brand. She's been appointed in order to educate advertisers about the platform’s user engagement tools. Klein will focus primarily on managing agency relationships worldwide when she joins the social network. The newly created role is reportedly head of global agency marketing, which Facebook has been looking to fill for the last quarter. It centres on developing scalable marketing programs for advertising agencies to integrate into their global plans for brands.


British Gas has hired its first head of brand marketing in Birds Eye UK’s marketing chief Margaret Jobling. After three and a half years Jobling leaves Birds Eyes to steer brand-building activity for British Gas and its sub brands. She has a team of over 50 marketers and will also work with its digital division on expanding its online and social media presence. 

Data Translator

With the current wealth of data available to brands and the huge emphasis placed on analytics it has created a demand for individuals that can connect these 'statistics' to 'decisions'. Without these middle man companies can find themselves overwhelmed with raw data, the 'Data Translator' utilises their strategic understanding to help form ideas and make relevant decisions as oppose to just sharing information.

Mike Bugembe, Cheif Analytics officer at JustGiving, highlights the lack of these candidates who can work with data and also find the “nuggets of gold” to help a companies strategy. “The difficulty is finding one individual who can cover both spectrums,” he added.

Examples: Diageo and JustGiving

What you need: Ability to analyse marketing and other data and then clearly explain to a business what the findings mean. Have a background in analytics combined with a more ‘human’ role, such as school governor.

Digital Media Planner and Buyer

BIA/Kelsey, media advisers, forecast that advertising revenues for social media platforms will reach $17 billion by 2017. Although the demand for app developers is obvious, its the digital media planners which is also seeing huge growth. While the traditional media planner is somewhat a one-person department (or just a name on a list of approved outsource vendors), the digital media planner and buyer might be part of a department in the making.

Examples: iCrossing and Honda

Master Storyteller

Content, Content, Content! One of the buzzwords of the last 18 months, the focus on content as a marketing tool has created a number of roles; one of which is the "Master Storyteller". It is becoming more and more common to see brands trying to immerse their customer in brand stories. The role of the Master Storyteller is to create a consistent story that represents the brand and its values through multiple marketing channels.

Example: Cystic Fibrosis Trust

What you need: Be a great content strategist and know how to execute it across multiple channels. Former journalists who can apply their experience to a business will do well.

Digital All-Rounder

Digital experience is becoming an essential part of all marketing roles now. Although having a specialism is still very important, we're now seeing more brands demanding a general understanding of digital practise as a minimum requirement. This is not surprising when Accenture's recent study forecasted that digital will account for 75% of marketing executives budgets within the next five years.

Martin Riley, CMO of Pernod Ricard, agrees that digital experience and understanding should be integrated into all marketing roles. “As we define the marketing roles of the future, we can take general roles and specialist roles as a basis but we need to encourage specialists to gain a broad understanding of the business and the commercial aspects of what marketing is seeking to achieve overall, and to encourage generalists to gain a deeper understanding and hands-on experience of generating insights, innovation and creativity,” says Riley.

There was no slowing Carat down last year, they followed up a very successful year with a huge 2013. Ad Age chose Carat as the Media Agency of the Year because of their ability to kick on, they increased revenue by 20% and recruited top talent 2013, while still securing new accounts and managing their huge General Motors account.

Carat Global President Doug Ray said: "After winning so much business last year we could have gotten distracted by trying to absorb the business and being too internally focused, the goal was to avoid distraction by hiring and "scaling operations."

2014 has started with a bang, and a number of competitive pitches have led to some huge agency wins!
We've highlighted the major deals this January:

The combined entity will be called Xaxis and will be run by the Brian Lesser, the existing global chief executive of Xaxis and David Moore, the founder of 24/7 Media will be the chairman of Xaxis.

The team at Chrysalis have come up with our predicted trends for the digital sector in 2014. Regular interaction with some of the leading digital agencies has given us a great insight into what they believe will be huge this year.

Steve Coogan's pseudo-fictional character Alan Partidge is making a comeback, according to reports.

Despite the "double-dip" recession and impending Eurozone doom, unemployment in Britain has actually fallen, according to the Office for National Statistics.