michael kahnPromoted to Worldwide CEO

What roles have you held throughout your tenure here?Since joining in 2005, I have held a number of positions. When we were DoubleClick owned, I managed Strategic Accounts. Since then, I have overseen a variety of functions, as VP of Marketing to EVP of Global Account Management & Business Development and most recently as the Global President.

How many countries have you visited on official performics business?Thirteen with many more to go. Countries visited include Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Singapore, and Switzerland.

What are your hobbies/interests outside the digital media space?Running, training, paddle boarding and enjoying the fresh air. Cheering for the Wisconsin Badgers and the Chicago Black-hawks. Spending time with my family, my wife Amy, my daughters Julie, Liza and Grace and my pets Annie and Max.

Name: Michael KahnNickname: MKCurrent City: ChicagoYears with Performics: 8.5

““Who was the greatest mentor you’ve ever had and

what leadership lesson has always stuck with you from that person?

I have been fortunate enough to have many great mentors and teachers who provid-ed me with leadership lessons and learning that I have carried forward in my career.

Dinny Cosyns, my first boss at J. Walter Thompson, shared with me a question to ask myself everyday to make sure I am focused on the most important things regarding our clients and the value we deliver; “What have I done today to move the client’s business ahead?”

Marshall Ross, my partner at Mitchiner, Ross & Kahn (a creative driven, full search agency we owned and built in the early ‘90s), taught me that in our business it’s always about the work. You can fight, you can disagree but it should always be about the work product and you should never be satisfied with it.

Steve Wohlwender, a young Art Direc-tor at Mitchiner, Ross & Kahn, shared two sayings that have stuck with me forever. If you are going to be a bear, be a grizzly.

W h i c h meant be aggressive, be confident, be hungry. Be scared or go home. Which is about coming to work everyday and pushing the envelope in our thinking, actions and outputs.

Tom Collinger, Executive Director Me-dill IMC Spiegel Digital & Database Re-search Initiative & Director Distance Learning Northwestern U, who provid-ed the perfect definition of strategy In consideration of all the possibilities, a clarified direction for accomplishing the targeted goal. Tom also shared that we can make choices every moment as to whether or not we will act strategically in the way we connect, communicate and respond.

Nick Beil, the person who hired me at Performics and gave me the magical

Nick Beil, the person who hired me at Performics and gave me the magical words “Land The Plane.” I would meet with Nick, be a bit too verbose and that was his perfect call to action.

Kevin Murakami, now at Google and a for-mer client partner at Bank of America, who showed me that having high expectations and a strong sense of humanity can go hand in hand.

Daina Middleton, the person who has led Performics rise to become a leading global performance marketing agency, and a per-sonal mentor who has shown me the power

of personal touch. She also reinforced that even in a data driv-en world, positioning, packaging, commu-nications and the written word still count and maybe more than ever.

Sheldon Kahn, my dad, who worked in the agency business for 30+ years in Chicago and was a far better ad man than me. He taught me the power of the show, of mak-ing human connections, of humor and, most of all, keeping it all in perspective.

He taught me the power of the show, of making human connections, of hu-mor and, most of all, keeping it all in perspective.

If you hadn’t spent your life in the advertisingindustry, what career would you have pursued?I would have been in advertising but as a copy-writer instead of an account guy. Or I would have gone deeper into my political science studies and worked in politics.

name one thing about Performics’ heritage you

hope always remains in-tact and one thing you are

eager to see change.I love that our value lies in driving direct and

attributed revenue for our clients, and that we have a culture filled with openness, curiosity

and a desire to continuously iterate.

Building on this foundation, I want us to increase our sense of urgency to evolve, grow and firmly es-

tablish a global leadership position. Our opportunity is now, and I want to build a high performance culture

that matches the high performance we deliver to our clients everyday.

Over the last few year, Performics has rapidly expanded globally, now with a presence in 34 markets. As you take the reins, what’s in store for future global expansion?We will continue to expand our global footprint through acquisitions, the opening of new offices and the eleva-tion of our capability.

We are looking at acquisitions today in LATAM, a dynam-ically growing economic and media marketplace where we are underrepresented, and Japan, one of the largest economies in the world where we work through 3rd party agencies to serve clients in that marketplace. We will also seek to make strategic acquisitions across other regions and countries where we can enhance our skill set or increase our market share. Beyond acquisitions, we will open new offices this year in Hong Kong and South Africa.

We will further fuel global expansion by building out our offerings across the network. Priorities include Perfor-mance Content, Planning/Insight, Analytics/Measure-ment and mastering driving performance across borders for multi-national accounts.

company culture& growth

What shifts do you think brands can make to better solve for cross-channel participant behavior? Should they be engaging agencies differently to solve for these needs?

Brands that design strategy from an Owned / Earned / Paid evergreen perspective versus a campaign ori-entation will have a vital leg up on the competition in realizing true cross channel gains. An Owned / Earned / Paid view accurately captures the way par-ticipants engage with a brand across all dimensions and is the foundation for end to end activation, measurement and optimization. In a participation driven marketing environment, cross channel is not just about media, it is about content, context and other connection points as well.

Brands should seek agencies that want to know about the actions that define the audience, and think about cross channel beyond media or market-ing campaign investment.

industry

Jim Cutler says to Roger Sterling, “Roger, I know what this company should look like: computer services, media buys pinpointed with surgical accura-cy... it’s the agency of the future.” Even though spoken in fictional 1969, Cutler is predicting the rise of biddable, real-time, performance-based ad-vertising. How do you envision Performics’s history, which is deeply rooted in performance media, converging with the recent rise of the “biddable world”, which has moved beyond paid search to include display, social, and even TV?

MK: It is a space we want to own. Given our roots in biddable and accountable media since our start, this is our natural domain. Today, Performics is focused on building best in class capability and scale in buying, optimizing and driving performance across all digital biddable media channels (search, social, mobile, display). The Performics of the future will work seamlessly across all biddable media properties (TV and outdoor too), moving dollars between channels, platforms and screens to drive the best performance/ROI. We will do this through a combination of talent and technolo-gy, and we will work as a fully integrated, demand generation engine for our clients gaining an ever increasing share of their spend.

It’s 1969 on Mad Men. the agency has just gotten its first computer.