Huge: Ready For Its Next Chapter

Design and technology business Huge has experienced a year of transformation. It named Lisa De Bonis as its new CEO in January this year after nearly three years within the business, initially as chief experience officer and then chief product officer. She oversaw a key element of Huge’s transformation by leading the development of technological infrastructure and the deployment of a suite of new AI-powered products and tools, such as Huge LIVE and the Creative Capital Index.

Meanwhile, IPG recently announced the sale of the agency brand as it continues to focus on new technologies within the experience design process to drive meaningful product and brand interactions. This evolution for Huge, it says, has set it up to deliver not only groundbreaking experience design but business transformation and growth.

“I joined Huge… because I saw the potential in advertising and digital work, despite industry limitations. Huge represented an opportunity to break traditional models and create more impactful work. I became CEO because I was the natural successor and believed there was still work to be done,” De Bonis explained to Creative Salon earlier this year.

Following her promotion, Huge also hired former BBH executive Chidi Achara as chief product officer to scale collaboration across product innovation, design and engineering, and integrate AI technologies to accelerate growth for clients, as well as Matt Weiss as its chief brand officer. In total, the business currently employs 1,000 people.

Among the projects Huge has partnered on, it cites its work with broadcaster NBCUniversal and the development of OLI to support audiences during the Paris Olympics and Paralympics as its “flagship product” for the year.

As Huge continues its moves towards what can only be an exciting yea ahead, it retains a vision and focus to do what it does best - experience design that drives growth for ambitious brands.

The IE was developed over a nine-month-period to support audiences keen to plan their viewing of the 7,000 hours of coverage across various time zones that was on offer.

“While everyone is talking about using GenAI, we incorporated it into a product that served viewers of the year’s most important sporting event with an innovative, hard-working solution that can become the answer to the problem that we all experience in our living rooms and bedrooms: What to watch?” explains De Bonis

She answers a few more questions about her maiden year leading the business below:

Lisa De Bonis, Huge's CEO, on the agency's 2024

What have been the major highlights for your business in 2024?

2024 continued to be a year of transformation for Huge, but we had a clear vision for what we wanted to achieve: to focus on what we do best —experience design that drives growth for ambitious brands— by returning to our “beautiful basics”: our talented people, our results-focused work, and our brand as an expression of our culture and values. This came hand-in-hand with our focus on Intelligent Experiences.

What is your proudest achievement from the last 12 months?

OLI, the conversational experience we designed and delivered for NBCU, became our flagship product this year.

From an organisational perspective, we’re proud to have renewed our executive leadership with some important additions that have been key in our repositioning in the market and business wins in the second half of the year. Additionally, we set ourselves to integrate tech and talent across all crafts and functions, from strategy and design to tech and program delivery.

What are you most looking forward to next year?

Continue to deliver Intelligent Experiences, expanding the possibilities of incorporating emerging technologies on experiences that have real impact on people’s lives. Our client roster has expanded in exciting new directions recently, in ways that inspire us to show the world the kind of impact our approach to experience design can have in a wide array of areas, from retail to luxury goods, from financial services to fitness, and more.

What do you feel have been the greatest industry challenges for agencies this year and why?

We continue to see the challenges to agencies that we identified years ago and that we’ve been working to address with successive changes and realignments: the obsolescence of the traditional agency business model; the pressure to deliver not only groundbreaking experience design but business transformation and growth with them; and the pressure on getting ahead in the AI game with solutions that drive real value and transformation. All of this has made for an increasingly competitive environment.

Has the addition of any AI solution made the profound impact on your business that was expected? If so – what?

We are consistently using AI-powered tools across our operations, from pitching to strategy to creative, with the strong belief that these tools can fuel creativity and innovation, not replace it. But that’s just table stakes. As we mentioned in reference of OLI (and other Intelligent Experiences we have in development), the biggest impact of GenAI is in the development of digital solutions to real-life problems

Creative Salon’s View: Huge's 2024 was marked by new beginnings with its new CEO - Lisa De Bonis, CCO- Chidi Achara and a new enhanced executive team.

Marketers are increasingly looking towards that next wave of customer experience, driven by advancements in AI, especially Gen AI. And Huge is placed incredibly well to deliver on just that. We will be watching the agency for an an exciting and innovative year ahead. Huge, under De Bonis and her team, is ready for its next chapter.