I see that Publicis New York has hired John Biondi (below) from Sapient as its first “chief experience officer,” charged with merging technology and creativity for its fortunate clients.
Does anyone else have one of these or is Publicis trail-blazing in its inimitable way? It’s certainly a diverting addition to the already over-populated agency C-suite but one that might cause some confusion (aside from wondering what such a person does).
The first C-suite denizen was, of course, the chief executive officer, or CEO. But if there’s a CEO in situ how do we abbreviate chief experience officer? Surely no-one will write out this ridiculous moniker in full every time. Over to you Monsieur Sadoun.
We also have, inter alia, chief creative officers (CCO), chief strategy officers (CSO, they used to be called planners), chief innovation officers, chief talent officers and, of course, everybody’s favourite, the CFO.
But who’ll be the first agency to appoint a chief advertising officer? Or does nobody have time for that any more?
Hi Stephen,
As usual, Publicis is jumping on the bandwagon not trailblazing (they were just behind us with our AI Assistant Alan recently too). We have had one at Stein IAS (MSQ Partners) for about a year – Mike Ruby- although we have Chief Content & Experience Offer – and not sure CCEO works as well!
http://www.steinias.com/about-us/leadership/
The title can’t be abbreviated as CExO because, if you say it out loud, it sounds the same as CXO, which means any member of the C-suite.
Bloody hell… What’s next, Chief Chief Officer. Remember a few years ago when JWT New York declared they were no longer an ad agency. They were now “Cultural Anthropologists.” That lasted less than a Chief Communications Officer in the Trump White House. For people in the communications business we are lousy at communications.