Lunch with Andrew Rutberg
(DirectBuzz) Just had lunch with Andrew Rutberg to talk about his new job. Since July, he’s been executive vice president, chief data officer for Wunderman—the first ever.
It’s a big job for the former Harte-Hanks and IBM exec. His assignment is to create a global data strategy for the Wunderman, and to help clients get “a data dial tone,” meaning “on-demand access to clean, relevant, actionable data,” he said
To that end, he’s now conducting what Wunderman calls “an extensive audit of our data practices across the board.” And he wants to do “an MRI to see how data moves and messages get through,” he said over a Cobb salad at an Italian place in Atlanta. (Wunderman spokesman Andrew Sexton and I had the penne). He’s also interested in what he calls “community intelligence.”
What’s he done to date? He led a global data summit in August for the data leaders from Wunderman branches. One thing they discussed was how to achieve the right mix of marketing and technology staff. And he is already racking up the frequent flyer miles. He’s already been to Europe, visiting Germany, France, the U.K. the Netherlands. He’ll soon be going to Asia.
Rutberg’s unit will take on everything from privacy to analytics. He hopes to “raise the bar for global deployments.”
All well and good. But why would Wunderman hire a data officer when it has plenty of inhouse expertise at its KnowledgeBase subsidiary? Andrew Sexton answered that.
“The agency holds the primary relationships with clients like Microsoft and Ford,” he explained. “It’s the point of entry.”
He added that Rutberg will be working closely with Gary Laben, CEO of KnowledgeBase.
Where will Andrew hang his hat? He will have an office at Fortelligent’s offices in Boston (he lives in the area). And he’ll have an office at Wunderman headquarters in New York. And if he’s not at either of those? Try the red-eye.
