Paving the Path to Digital In-House Success

By Molly Knol

ANA

In his session at the 2019 ANA Digital and Social Media Conference, Josh Palau, VP of media strategy and platforms at Bayer Consumer Health, will break down the organizational choices that pave the path to in-house agency success. The ANA's Molly Knol sat down with Palau to get his thoughts on the process of in-housing and the tools necessary to make it work.

Q. You've described your role, in part, as "creating a seamless brand experience for consumers." Why do you think that is so important for today's consumers?

Today, many are struggling with the role of their website and the experiences they create. For us, a guiding principle is to simply make sure that we're always present and useful. Present when a person is looking for an answer in their moment of need, and useful in that we provided them with the helpful information. I have found that if you stick with this definition, you'll develop content that truly delivers value to your consumers.

Q. At the 2019 ANA Digital and Social Media Conference, you're covering the why and how of Bayer's process to bring digital media in-house. What training resources or skill sets do you think are important to get digital media right, either in-house or with an agency partner?

In either instance it starts with having in-house expertise to support and teach the organization while also being a brand steward. Aside from having deep subject matter expertise, the most important skill sets are being able to translate some of the complexities of digital. We continue to upskill the organization through a structure learning agenda and partner workshops.

Q. Why do you think being responsible for the end-to-end process of digital media is important? Why make the switch now?

You can't be a great marketer if you don't understand media and data. Having it in-house provides you much more transparency and the ability to turn insights into actions with much greater speed. We made the switch now because we needed to accelerate the performance of digital.

Q. What are you looking forward to most at this year's conference?

Connecting with colleagues to learn and share experiences.