Meet the Technologists: Jayna Kothary

Adobe Firefly is a proud supporter of LBB. As part of its sponsorship of the Digital Craft content channel, we spend time with some of the most innovative and creative minds in the industry.

In this latest edition, we sit down with Jayna Kothary, the first-ever global chief solutions officer at IPG. In this role, she is responsible for designing future-facing solutions that help clients grow, by leveraging technology, data and innovation to bring creativity together with media, CRM, experiences, commerce and AI.

Starting her career in consulting, Jayna then held senior leadership positions at BP and Vodafone before moving into the marketing industry in 2015, first at WPP where she was the global chief technology officer for client accounts, and then at MRM as global CTO, leading technology, commerce, consulting and innovation.

Now two years into her IPG career, Jayna has played a key role in launching Interact, now a central part of IPG’s tech infrastructure, and has been instrumental in driving the holding company’s strategic partnership with Adobe, optimising its content supply chain and advancing client-first innovation.

Speaking with LBB’s Ben Conway, Jayna discusses some of the tech and trends impacting her role right now, why agencies don’t have to be boxed into ‘marketing services’, and working with Adobe to build the foundations for “real innovation”.

LBB> You’ve led IPG’s global solutions for almost two years now, after three years as CTO at MRM. How has your focus shifted at the holding company level? What’s a typical day like for you?

Jayna> Honestly, I think I have the best job in the company and I absolutely love it. I get to work across our agencies, partners and clients to design solutions that actually move the needle, at a moment when processing power and innovation are evolving at a crazy speed.

I’ve always believed that growth happens at the intersections - where creative meets media, content meets commerce, social meets CRM. Sitting at the holding company level gives me the chance to make those connections in a way that’s meaningful.

And my days? Never the same. One week might include exploring beauty premiumisation, food influencer strategies, and how AI can accelerate EV growth – sometimes all before Friday.

LBB> Your role now spans creative and media. Were these areas you were already comfortable with? How is technology helping shape how those teams work?

Jayna> I’ve been in the industry just over a decade, so not as long as many of my colleagues, but I’ve had a holding company role before, so creative and media aren’t new to me. That said, I’m always drawn to the white space. For years we’ve talked about uniting creative and media, but very few have cracked the code on how to make 1+1=3. Technology, and increasingly AI, gives us that horizontal layer to make it real. And yes, I know I just opened the AI can of worms.

LBB> You were in-house at BP and Vodafone before jumping agency-side with WPP. What lessons did the brand-side years give you?

Jayna> My career path hasn’t exactly been straight. It’s more of a winding road. And while it’s been unpredictable (and at times a little scary), it’s also been a gift.
Starting out in the big four and then consulting for nearly five years, I had to earn my seat at the table. I was a 5'4", young-looking Indian woman working in a man’s world of tech and consulting, and I learned quickly that knowledge, constant learning, and sheer hard work were the only ways to be taken seriously. It forced me to stay on my A-game, always.

On the brand side, I learned how clients really think, the formal and informal ways decisions get made, how cultures form, and how partners are chosen. Trust has to be earned, over and over. Agencies can’t hide behind infrastructure or inertia; if you don’t deliver, or expectations don’t match reality, the consequences are immediate.

I also saw that agencies don’t have to be boxed into ‘marketing services’. We can (and should) widen the aperture to become true growth partners. My one piece of advice for agencies: substance over style always wins in the long run.

LBB> You helped bring IPG closer to Adobe, implementing Adobe GenStudio products into IPG’s content pipeline. How has this helped clients innovate?

Jayna> I led the deal design, structuring it so IPG and our clients benefit, while differentiating our offering alongside [IPG’s database marketing solution] Acxiom.

Our brilliant CIO org and tech partners are leading the rollout, with Acxiom and MRM now feeding services and data into Adobe. It’s been a true win-win for IPG, Adobe and, most importantly, our clients.

For clients, it’s been game-changing. Adobe’s content supply chain gives us a unified workflow, shared asset management and taxonomy, traceable approvals, and access to gen AI innovation. A highlight has been using custom AI models on Firefly to deliver speed and consistency across multi-brand, multi-market portfolios.

It might not sound ‘sexy’, but these foundations are what make cross-discipline collaboration and performance measurement possible, and that’s the real innovation.

LBB> You helped launch IPG’s Interact operating system in 2024 – how are you continuing to develop Interact? What’s next on the horizon that excites you?

Jayna> Interact is now market-leading among HoldCo platforms. An independent evaluation recently confirmed that. With Acxiom’s datasets, RealID, clean-room capabilities and a best-in-class toolset that automates media and marketing workflows, I sometimes wonder how we ever worked without it.

We’ve built AI into the workflows themselves, not as a separate bolt-on, which means adoption is deep and broad across disciplines. What’s next is even more exciting: richer client interfaces, a multi-agent framework to take automation and collaboration further, and more integration with partners. Not just [with] ‘big tech’, but also startups and mid-size innovators.

LBB> What deployments of marketing technology at IPG have made you most proud recently?

Jayna> We’ve struck a great balance between proprietary and partner martech so we can build best-fit solutions instead of pushing a monolithic stack. Clients want value from their existing investments, bridges between IT and brand use cases, and stronger first-party data assets. With IPG tech augmenting that, we’re able to deliver real outcomes.

We’re now seeing more and more examples of this balance in action, and that’s something that would’ve been tough to pull off just a few years ago.

LBB> With so much change in the industry, how do you know where to focus innovation – and when to commit?

Jayna> You don’t always know! There’s an art and a science to it. For me, it’s about piloting fast, learning quickly, and then either scaling or moving on. Moving on might mean admitting it didn’t work, or that the timing or use-case wasn’t right. But when it does work, it’s about codifying the lessons and rolling them out.

I like the ‘strategiser’ framework of ‘exploit versus explore’. It forces you to balance today’s proven capabilities with tomorrow’s experiments. The hardest part is cultural; getting comfortable with assigning budget to experimentation.

LBB> What do you geek out on outside of work?

Jayna> Design, in all its forms. Interiors, cooking, you name it. And now with AI, it’s even more fun. I love using it to play with recipes or mock up design ideas. It’s my creative sandbox when I’m not thinking about client solutions.