Deep Digital Business, the LLYC startup that aims to have a turnover of around €50m by 2025
LLYC continues to redouble its commitment to technology and digitalisation at the same pace as its expectations. Just over a year ago, in April 2021, the consultancy launched Deep Digital Business, a business unit that integrates all service lines and solutions for Artificial Intelligence, Influence and Digital Transformation and Inbound Marketing.
The first steps have been encouraging. In 2021, this area already accounted for 22% of LLYC’s revenue and 17% of Ebitda. This year, it is expected that more than a third of operational revenue, 35%, will come from this unit and the objective set by the strategic plan is that half of LLYC’s turnover will come from this unit by 2025, i.e. around 50 million euros.
The CEO of this department, Adolfo Corujo, coordinates this key area for the firm’s strategy from Miami. In the Madrid office, he explains to DIRCOMFIDENCIAL that “the skills you need to have today to help clients in Communication, Marketing and Public Affairs are no longer what they were years ago. You need to have a lot of technological capacity for the development of performance projects, creativity in proposals, positioning and digital reputation“.
On this basis, LLYC decided “instead of trying to integrate this as another speciality of a communications company, to build a structure that provides services to our teams, injecting technology, creativity, performance and digital reputation. We have integrated ourselves in a transversal way to provide this service”. The firm’s assessment of the first months since its birth is very positive. “We speak a language that we have created, in which we and our clients understand each other,” he says.
Deep Digital Business currently has 400 employees, almost 40% of the staff, including creatives, data engineers, paid media specialists and digital influence consultants. Corujo says that “we have the most diverse team in terms of profiles, backgrounds and career paths”.
The CEO describes this business unit as “an internal entrepreneurship project. As if we had put a start-up inside LLYC so that it would permeate the entire company“. In this process, the technology area has integrated the businesses of the innovation consultancy Apache Digital in Spain and the agency BESO in Mexico.
Change in services, competitors and risks
Corujo acknowledges that in this field, the concept of competition has changed. He explains that “we compete with many more players in many more areas. Now it is more difficult to define who the competition is”, and that “we draw a lot of inspiration from the big business, strategic, innovation and some technology consultancies”.
The services most in demand by clients are, within deep learning and artificial intelligence, data; in digital marketing, performance; in creativity, all-line campaigns; and in digital influence and reputation, social leadership and crisis and risk management.
On risks, Corujo warns that “you have to take them very seriously. Working with volumes of Big Data or applying artificial intelligence pattern models requires an exquisite treatment of the data, the type of algorithms, eliminating prejudices and honesty in the handling of the data”. He acknowledges that when working with artificial intelligence, “it is very easy to lose perspective. We focus on not losing it.
To achieve a profound transformation in companies, Corujo recommends that communication professionals “talk less about digitalisation and technology and do more. Get your hands in the flour, make mistakes, get back to work”. “That’s what LLYC is doing with Deep Digital Business. We are walking the walk,” he concludes.
