Digital or Bust

Digital or Bust

Avatar photo
By Eric J. Bertrand
February 11, 2020

Although this seems obvious, and, even with the advent of social media and companies like Google and Amazon integrating into our daily lives, many companies, including some large, publicly traded companies, felt it was unnecessary to develop a comprehensive digital strategy.  Companies that were still performing, albeit at significantly lower growth rates than their digital peers, suggested it was not worth the investment to assimilate to ecommerce or digital channels. Sales organizations that have relied only upon on-the-ground sales forces, using long-time personal relationships, have slowly seen that model deteriorate. Covid-19 has significantly accelerated the idea that companies without a digital ecosystem are likely to be “Blockbustered”.

Over the past few years, Mod Op has partnered with many clients to achieve their goal of building a digital ecosystem, encompassing a modern, effective website, mobile applications and a digital media strategy, including programmatic and display advertising, SEM, SEO, social media and public relations.  Additionally, creative is an important aspect of all of these disciplines. Effective creative will always make a good digital strategy great.

To be clear, we don’t believe we need to leverage all disciplines for all clients. Instead, we consider the historic business model of the client and work with management to build a strategy that will transform and conjoin with the existing model, creating a framework for the future. And, while digital transformation has been more common among B2C companies than it has been among B2B companies, there may be opportunities for B2B companies to differentiate themselves through new digital frameworks and strategies. Regardless, an integrated approach, including a portion or all of the strategies above, will allow for companies to outpace their peers, or in some cases, save them from a fate similar to that of Blockbuster.

Avatar photo
About the author Eric J. Bertrand

Eric is the CEO and a partner of Mod Op, a full service agency with offices in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Portland and Panama City, Panama. His focus at Mod Op is on strategic planning, mergers & acquisitions, rationalizing operations, developing financial systems as well as launching the digital advertising group.
Prior to Mod Op, Eric was a PE/VC fund manager, having invested $400 million in 60+ companies over the past 20 years. Eric was a General Partner with Palisade Capital Management, where he jointly managed a private equity fund and venture capital funds.
Eric holds an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurial Studies from New York University. He graduated from Bryant University with a BS in Business Administration concentrating on Finance and Applied Actuarial Mathematics.
Eric has been a board of director member of 27 private and public companies as well as charities Unite For Sight and the Alive Inside Foundation. He has been a member of the Bryant University Business School Board of Advisors, the Wall Street Counsel and was recently honored with the Distinguished Alumni Service Award.

The Latest

We study the game as hard as we play it.
Learn with us what’s now and next.

Scroll to Top