B-to-B Agency Doremus+Co Shifts Focus to Creativity With New President Sarah Lent

B-to-b marketing has been around for well over a century, as exhibited by Omnicom’s dedicated b-to-b shop Doremus+Co, which celebrates its 120th anniversary this year. But only recently has business-to-business marketing come to the forefront of the marketing world.

In the past few years, Cannes Lions has added a Creative B2B category, LinkedIn started its B2B Institute, and there has been considerable buzz around the category recently as it relates to creativity.

Doremus+Co is, after more than a century in business, riding the wave of b-to-b popularity, making some recent changes to account for more creativity in the b-to-b space, including hiring Sarah Lent, a global leader in b-to-b marketing and communications, as its new president. 

Lent fills a role that had previously been handled by Paul Hirsch, who has been elevated to CEO and retains the title of chief creative officer. Lent will partner with Hirsch and the entire leadership team to support the Omnicom agency’s mission to help clients navigate complexity and realize the potential of their brand through business-to-business marketing, innovation, strategy and creative excellence.

In addition, she will oversee partnerships within Omnicom and support the expansion of Doremus’ offerings in content, social and demand generation—areas of increasing importance and investment to b-to-b marketers. 

Lent comes to Doremus+Co from VSA Partners, where she was CMO. Her extensive b-to-b background has included positions at Cahan & Associates, along with eight years at Omnicom’s Interbrand, where she worked with large enterprise b-to-b brands across the U.S., Europe and EMEA, rising to executive director. She was also executive director, EMEA at R/GA, and later a senior vice president at programmatic media agency EssenceMediacom.

Lent dealt with Doremus+Co when she was at Interbrand and had great respect for the agency, and she praised the work that Hirsch has been doing in his five years at Doremus+Co, especially as it comes to combining brand building with delivering performance across channels.

“The integration of the two, focused across that b-to-b buyer, I haven’t seen that at any other agency, and that’s what made me really excited about joining Doremus at this moment in time,” Lent told Adweek.

Rising with b-to-b

The growth of b-to-b brands is now outpacing that of b-to-c, according to Enterprise Recalibrated, a special report from Doremus and Interbrand launched as part of Best Global Brands 2022. Doremus+Co states that it is poised to capitalize on this market movement.

Over the past two years, the agency has launched or relaunched eight brands and is now seeing three times as many new business opportunities as in the past. It was also named a Creative Agency of the Year for two years running at ANA Business Marketing NYC’s Global ACE Awards, a longstanding hallmark of creative excellence in b-to-b.

Hirsch was the inaugural jury president of the Creative B2B Lions in 2022 and has seen, over the last five years, the rapid changes in the industry, from the adoption of new platforms and channels to ChatGPT and AI, and clients wondering if they should be on Snapchat or TikTok.

“The pace of change has been pretty incredible, and as a creative I love it all,” Hirsch told Adweek, adding that it was an honor to be the first jury president at Cannes in his category. “The most important thing about that was the fact that, if you can get everyone who’s coming into the space to think about things more strategically, more creatively, it can become more interesting, more mature, a lot quicker, which is the stuff we’re trying to do at Doremus.”

Because b-to-b is now a hot commodity in the creative marketing world, the competition is heating up and Doremus+Co is prepared to tackle it, with decades of experience and a constant search for what’s new in the sector.

“B-to-b has always been pigeonholed into a performance corner,” said Lent. “Today, more than ever, I believe there’s such competition that you need to have a platform and an idea that people believe in and that buy into not just your customers, but your employees.”

Hirsch added that over the past few years, the agency has doubled down on creative, which he marked as a driver of b-to-b growth.

“This continues to fuel success for us and our clients. Now, with Sarah’s deep experience across data, media and technology, we’ve added another layer to our offering that extends our approach further across all communication touchpoints, creating better brand experiences and delivering strong bottom-line growth,” said Hirsch.

He noted work for trucking transportation company RXO and Lego Education as two examples of successful creative b-to-b the agency has done, both of which were honored at the recent Global Ace Awards and earned Doremus+Co a silver in the Creative Agency of the Year category.

Lent will concentrate her initial efforts at Doremus+Co on unlocking b-to-b growth across the Omnicom network, including within the Omnicom Advertising Collective and Omnicom’s DAS Group of Companies, a global group of marketing services companies.

“Anyone who can help us keep realizing our potential and unlocking things, it’s a good thing, so I’m excited to have Sarah’s energy and enthusiasm and adding that to the mix,” said Hirsch.