It's not news that the pandemic caused many agencies to take a breath and analyze their approach to work and business. For an information-driven agency like PHD, that included making the right investments so that it was ready to roll with whatever came its way.

“Agility has never been more important,” says president Caroline Moul. “We definitely work in a more agile way in order to be able to meet our clients’ demands. Luckily, business has not slowed down, but that means there’s more pressure on our staff and we have to make sure our teams are equipped to handle it.”

Moul says PHD adapted by making investments – adding senior-level expertise and more capabilities in a variety of sectors, from data analysis to creative – in order to ensure brands were properly supported.

“For data and analytics, we put more focus on automation and data visualization, advanced analytics from attribution to audience analysis, and to rolling out clean room analysis,” says Moul. “We have seen progress when it comes to anticipating market conditions and what our clients will need to do to meet those conditions.”

Of course, it helps that PHD has access to proprietary tools inherited from holding company Omnicom – such as marketing science, advancing measurements from attribution modelling, consulting and clean room analysis. For over a decade, PHD has collaborated with the mother ship when it comes to a planning operating system that’s now called Omni Studio. It’s a framework that integrates smart thinking, smart data and the knowledge of over 5,000 PHD employees around the world.

“Our approach is to make sure we’re able to plug and play with the data we have available as the landscape shifts,” she sums, “not only for analysis, but also in terms of how we can activate in the marketplace.”

When it comes to activations, Moul points to one in particular that she is especially proud of. “When you think about society coming out of the pandemic, everything is about being purpose-driven,” she says. “That is something we saw in our Dove “Detox” campaign.”