5 Minutes with... Jeff Blackman

When I ask Jeff Blackman what brought him to where he is today, he begins by saying, “I hated my first job.” He says the people were great, but the industry lacked creativity and innovation. “Luckily for me, that little production company was quietly turning its video capability into an interactive agency,” says Jeff. “That's when I got a sense of what was becoming possible for brand experiences in the early Web 2.0 days. I grew as that agency did, and started their New York office.”

Since then, he’s weaved his way between startups, indies, and big holding companies. At Publicis, he helped integrate digital into traditional as part of their ‘Power of One’ model. At Havas, he became the first CXO before spending a few years with an AI product innovation startup. “I’d love to say it was all planned, but you grab the chances you get and try to learn like crazy.”

Along the way, he also started a hard cider brand and opened a craft beer bar in upstate New York. “The day we got our liquor licence was the day Covid shut down bars and restaurants. You definitely learn how to pivot pretty quickly in that scenario – so that business started working with other beverage brands on how to stand up their D2C,” explains Jeff.

All of that brought him to the New York agency, Barbarian, at a critical moment in the industry. “Things are shifting faster than ever but in that change is opportunity. I want Barbarian to be the team that leads the way and harnesses what is possible for brands.”

LBB’s Tará McKerr took 5 minutes with Jeff to find out more.

LBB> Jeff, you’ve argued agencies should treat work as “a digital product designed to experiment, evolve and scale”. How would that shift change how Barbarian scopes, prices and measures a brief in practice?

Jeff> Campaign thinking has a start and an end. Products live on, evolve, are optimised, and seek maximum value for both business and consumer over time.

Campaigns don’t go away but we have to approach them differently. Think of plans and scopes more like product roadmaps. Coming up with the idea is always the most important thing to crack. But the first question needs to be, 'What can this idea become or evolve into?'. This will lead to better, more sustained work and improved outcomes for our clients.

LBB> Since formalising an AI innovation practice, acquiring G-Innovations and opening a Hyderabad office, what does your capability stack look like now – and what kinds of problems can you solve today that you couldn’t 18 months ago?

Jeff> This is the fun part. We’ve been hard at work beefing up our capabilities. Not that we are playing catch-up, but we have been selective about where we can leapfrog and invest in new areas built on our core. AI innovation is fast-paced; you have to quickly move from R&D to real applied AI solutions. In terms of what we can do today that we couldn’t do 18 months ago, I think one just has to look at where AI tools and LLMs have evolved to, even in just the past few months. We’re now building agents, designing adaptive brand systems, developing conversational commerce, and using AI across our creative and content work.

LBB> Cheil has just launched the Cheil Agency Network, bringing Barbarian closer to Iris and McKinney – Where do you want Barbarian to lead within that group, and what does AI-first creativity look like across shared clients?

Jeff> Unlike many other holding company structures, we all play in unique lanes for the most part. The vision is that when we come together, we’re stronger as a partner for our clients because we can tap into other capabilities more easily. Barbarian’s offering runs the gamut from social and content to brand marketing and creative to customer experience design and enterprise tech, with AI infused across all. It’s in the customer experience and tech area where we’re more specialised in the network.

I wouldn’t so much call it AI-first creativity as much as understanding how AI can be used to amplify an idea. It’s always idea-first and how does it come to life after that?

LBB> With Barbarian’s work having such a broad range, what’s your filter for when a brief should become a product, a platform, or a piece of content?

Jeff> We start with the brief behind the brief. Or what is really going to solve the problem. I’d say it’s a discussion at first about how all these things come together around an idea for that solution. Then we’re figuring out, is this more content-led, is content the hero and [are] the other channels or platforms role-players? Vice versa, is this product- or platform-led and what is content’s role to support that? That’s the kind of discussion we’re having and using to inform our approach and how we mobilise around an idea.