- Brian Morrissey

Tribal DDB is bringing former top executive Mike Parker back into the fold to serve as co-president of its U.S. operations.
 
Parker and Richard Guest will serve as co-presidents at Tribal. Parker will operate from San Francisco and Guest from New York, where he has been managing director of the office there for the past three years.
 
Parker spent the just eight months at Betawave, an ad network run by former Tribal DDB CEO Matt Freeman, as vp of strategic solutions. Prior to that, he was director of digital strategy at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for two years. He was CEO of Tribal DDB Canada and spent a decade with DDB prior to joining Goodby.
 
"As we're called more and more to the C suite and get charged with a brand's direction, I have more ammunition to go to battle with," said Tribal CEO Paul Gunning. "It'll free me up to put a little more attention on the global network. We're having a huge expansion in Asia."

"Right now there's still a lot of question about the right way to service digital, who own social media and how you do digital production," said Parker. "There's still a lot to be figured out and a lot of opportunity. What's exciting is clients are committed to digital now and it's really matured."

Parker and Guest will split overall U.S. responsibilities, without a geographic divide, for Tribal's offices in Chicago, Dallas, New York, San Francisco and Seattle and satellite offices in Los Angeles and Miami.
 
Gunning had taken over U.S. responsibilities from Liz Ross in March. At the time, he said Tribal needed to focus on operational efficiencies. In that time, Gunning has driven the shop's offices to share production for clients, rather than serving them all from the office that won the business. It has also further developed centers of excellence, like New York's social media focus.
 
Tribal's U.S. offices have had an up-and-down year. Along with fellow Omnicom Group shop Agency.com and Publicis Groupe's Digitas, Tribal was replaced as Wrigley's digital agency by a trio of smaller shops: Big Spaceship, Firstborn Interactive and EVB.
 
Gunning said there's little to the thought that so-called "traditional" digital agencies are losing ground to smaller, more nimble shops. Tribal, for instance, subsequently won the Pepsi AMP business and is handling the social media piece for OfficeMax's "Elf Yourself" holiday push.
 
"It's a little ridiculous," he said of what he characterizes as the "production versus full-service" debate. "It's a very competitive environment and our clients and ourselves are trying various mixes and models. We're right there along with them to get the most out of every penny they spend. You'll see hundreds of combos, but no one particular model will completely own how the advertising world operates."
 
Betawave, which Freeman joined in June 2008 when it was named GoFish, has been building up a network of mom- and kid-focused sites. It hopes to differentiate itself in the crowded ad network space by offering "attention" advertising opportunities on sites that have high engagement rates. It boasts reaching 32 million users through sites like MiniClip, Shutterfly and Meez.
 
According to financial filings, the company took in $2.3 million in the second quarter and recorded a net loss of $2.6 million.