Profero's Peter Moody to lead Havas Worldwide Tokyo's new digital arm

According to Stephen Cox, CEO of Havas WW Japan, the launch is on the back of strong growth for the agency over the past year, particularly in digital. "Basically we’ve been growing Havas WW over the last couple of years from a fairly small shop to a significant player in the market with revenues growing 25 to 30 per cent year-on-year and a staff of 50," said Cox.

The decision to launch the digital division was, conversely, to avoid a siloed approach to digital, he said. "The launch of a division looks like it's siloed out but what we really want to do is to get up to the level of digital as we need it now, with a wide range of expertise working together at the heart of the company. Because of the nature of the market, however, and perceptions of digital, we've opted to brand it as a digital division to make it clear that we're very focused on it," explained Cox. 

The new division will straddle both creative and media and, when Havas WW moves into its new office, will be situated physically between Havas WW and Havas Life to facilitate integration. 

Moody was chosen, he added, because his views on the subject aligned closely with Cox's own.

At Havas, Moody is tasked with helping clients to integrate digital seamlessly into all marketing activities, to get the digital team operating with "everyone else" and to win new local clients based on needs that are not being met in the market.

In Cox's opinion, most of the agencies in Japan persist in creating digital silos, which he believes presents an opportunity. "The big agencies here would find it hard to truly integrate digital throughout, and the smaller ones are either entirely focused on digital or don't have the scale to address it at all."

While Havas Worldwide has a strong digital practice, having launched campaigns for clients Air France and Pernod Ricard in Japan among others, Cox feels the agency has a ways to go in building a truly channel-agnostic team and educating clients on this approach. "It will take time before we can talk to the clients in this way and have them fully take it on, but I truly believe that advertising will not thrive until digital is so ubiquitous we take it for granted and stop speaking of it separately."