The phrase "agency whisperer" has always suggested a certain kind of magic — the ability to translate between the dialects of holding company executives and technology platform salespeople, two groups who need each other desperately and understand each other imperfectly.
Jitendra Kumar, who spent two decades at Google, most recently overseeing agency partnerships for Google Customer Solutions in the United States, has now taken that translation skill to Hightouch, the data activation company that emerged from the Y Combinator incubator in 2018 and has since grown into a business valued at $2.75 billion.
Mr. Kumar will serve as Hightouch's first head of commercial for advertising, a title that suggests the company is ready to court the large agency holding companies in earnest. His mandate, according to the company, is to develop partnerships with major agencies and brands and help them apply data and artificial intelligence capabilities across their media operations.
(The phrase "across their media workflows" appeared in the announcement, which is the kind of language that causes a certain type of marketing executive to nod vigorously while everyone else reaches for more coffee.)
For Hightouch, the hire represents an attempt to build credibility with the agency world at a moment when the company is growing quickly and the category of customer data platforms has become, if not quite crowded, then certainly more populated than it was a few years ago. For Mr. Kumar, it represents a bet that the next chapter of advertising technology will be written by companies that are not named Google.
Whether the agencies he once courted on Google's behalf will be as receptive when he arrives representing a smaller firm remains to be seen. Then again, twenty years of knowing which conference rooms have the good coffee has to count for something.
Original story published in adweek.com: "$2.75B AI Startup Hightouch Poaches Google’s Agency Whisperer Jitendra Kumar"