A digital consultancy agency founded earlier this year by two industry veterans is making moves in Cincinnati with the hire of two local professionals, including snagging one of the region's well-known executives.
CourtAvenue — a company launched in January by former WPP executives Kenny Tomlin, also the founding CEO of Rockfish, and Dan Khabie, the founding CEO of Mirum, a global digital agency — this month tapped Cincinnati’s Michael Stich as CEO and general partner. Stich, a former CEO, CIO and COO at Rockfish, leaves dual roles at advertising and communications behemoth WPP and VMLY&R.
He joins Scott Hamm, another Rockfish alum who most recently served as a lead project manager at 84.51, Kroger’s data analytics company, at the agency. Hamm started in October as CourtAvenue’s head of data.
Stich, a 2016 Courier C-Suite Award winner, is a major coup for CourtAvenue, Tomlin told me. Both he and Khabie have been courting him from day one.
Stich and Hamm also represent CourtAvenue’s first two employees in Cincinnati as the agency starts its buildout across the country.
“Michael's arrival is not only exciting for CourtAvenue, but it's great news for the Cincinnati market in the midst of a pandemic – and a down economic market,” Tomlin said. “Michael and Scott have both lived in the area for 15-plus years, experiencing first-hand the talent within digital and marketing.”
Stich, in his previous position, served dual roles as WPP’s global client leader for Dell and chief business officer at VMLY&R, an agency created by WPP in 2018.
In his new role, Stich will build the foundation for a new wave of services at CourtAvenue, applying strategy and innovation and focusing on both existing and new paths of digital engagement.
CourtAvenue is heavily technology-focused and aims to help organizations improve their end-to-end digital experiences and develop new products, Stich said. The intention is to create new forms of relationships between customers and brands.
Stich – and Hamm, too – said he made the leap to CourtAvenue because of its entrepreneurial upside.
Both see similarities between the new agency and Rockfish, which was acquired in 2011 by WPP. Tomlin founded Rockfish in northwest Arkansas in 2006 and grew it to a $70 million company over a period of about 10 years, Stich said. In Cincinnati, the company employed around 120 people with an office at the foot of Mount Adams.
So far, CourtAvenue has landed clients in technology, retail, automotive and health care, among others. This quarter, the agency has added Taylor Guitars, Epson, Barkley and KIA to its portfolio.
“We’re not a $10 million agency yet, but we’re off to the races toward that direction,” Stich said. “We’re excited to see where it’s going to go.”
Stich said CourtAvenue is planning for a physical Cincinnati office, even though the company, in a way, is geographically agnostic. Even pre-Covid, the firm promoted a “digital nomad” culture, which lets employees work from virtually anywhere.
The firm will maintain smaller bases in a number of different cities – none of which are formally considered its headquarters – and those offices will integrate and work together. So far, CourtAvenue also has a physical presence in San Diego, Minneapolis and Austin.
Stich said it’s important for the company to maintain a presence locally for several reasons: Cincinnati is in close proximity to many industry-leading Fortune 500 companies, has “tremendous energy” and is seeing growth in the local tech and startup scene.
The company will be looking to hire digital talent, including data scientists, data engineers, technologists and user experience professionals. It’s already hired one additional employee in the past two weeks with a few more pending.
“My whole motivation for this thing is to create jobs in Cincinnati,” Stich said. “Cincinnati is a great talent center for innovative marketing.”
Hamm said companies are at an “inflection point.” With the rapid expansion of data; the rise of 5G, which makes transporting all that data much faster; machine learning; and augmented reality, there’s opportunity to create new and better experiences for consumers. And for businesses, new business models and new ways to engage.
In this new role, Hamm will explore new data strains and help clients leverage that data to drive business decisions. CourtAvenue’s job is to help clients understand, implement and capitalize on emerging innovations, so that they can create experiences, maximize recurring revenue streams and accelerate growth.
“That open door is really exciting,” Hamm said. “The opportunities are endless.”
His hire comes at a time when the “demand for speed, transparency and ease around business transactions has never been greater,” Khabie said in a release.
“I think customers are willing to expose themselves to a degree as long as they have trust and it’s transparent as to how that data is used,” Hamm said. “It’s not just about capturing all this new data that’s coming through but thinking about how to connect it and generate value from it.”
