Sarah Heitkamp has built her career across two continents and now runs strategy at Digitas. Her biggest win isn’t a campaign. It’s the connection gap, an idea at the centre of every piece of work the Publicis-owned digital agency creates.
It’s an approach she’s applied across work for McDonald’s ALDI and Gumtree, to name a few, from data-led CRM to full brand relaunch.
In this week’s Fast 10, B&T’s very own David Hovenden and Heitkamp talk why judgment is a scarce thing in the era of AI and telling clients what they don’t want to hear.
1. You’ve had a brilliant career. From strategic media planner at Zenith Media to CSO of Digitas. If you had to pick one, what would be your career highlight so far?
Sarah Heitkamp: There have been plenty of campaigns I’m proud of, and plenty that drove real business results. But the real highlight is when the thinking outlives the project. From global brand rollouts to making the ‘Connection Gap’ central to Digitas. When other people pick up your thinking and run with it, you know it’s made a real difference. As CSO, that’s now my job: less about having the answers myself, more about helping everyone around me find better ones.
2. From Publicis Groupe in Germany to Zenith Media’s London HQ to Digitas in Sydney. What’s one thing that’s been true of every agency you’ve worked at, no matter the market?
SH: Great work always comes from small groups of people who trust each other enough to say ‘that’s not good enough yet’, and who share a stubborn ambition to make brilliant work that genuinely solves problems for our clients.
3. 13+ years in, what part of the job still makes you nervous?
SH: Telling a client something they don’t want to hear, but need to. For example, telling them their targets aren’t achievable still makes my stomach drop. But I’ve learned that honesty isn’t the hard part. The hard part is walking in with a clear plan for what is possible. Clients don’t need us to agree with them. They need us to give them confidence in where they can win. It’s the most uncomfortable part of the job and the most valuable.
4. As a young girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?
SH: A doctor, until an internship at a hospital changed my mind very quickly. Then I wanted to be a film and TV producer. That didn’t quite work out, so I landed in advertising and media, which is close enough. I still get to tell stories, just with more spreadsheets.
5. If you had to pitch The Connection Gap to a client in one sentence, with no jargon at all, what would it be?
SH: Somewhere between what your customers expect and what you actually offer, you’re losing money. We tell you exactly where that gap exists, exactly how much it’s worth, and how to close it.
6. As an industry, what’s one thing you would change to make us all better?
SH: I’d stop the rush to automate judgment out of the process. As AI makes content infinite, judgment becomes the scarce thing, and it’s built over years of making calls and getting some wrong. At Publicis, our ‘Human X’ approach is about multiplication, not replacement: people bring the judgment, AI brings the speed and scale, and together they accelerate each other.
7. I love the work you’ve done for ALDI. What’s your favourite work that you’ve done in the past 12 months?
SH: There are so many great projects the team has worked on, from ALDIfy, which recently won an award for Best Digital Craft & UX, to McDonald’s data-led customer growth CRM work driving compounding customer growth, and Gumtree’s fully connected brand relaunch across creative, media and CRM. But looking back since I joined Digitas, it’s probably building the Connection Gap into everything we do. It started as a way to explain what we do and has become the question every piece of work has to answer.
8. What’s the best career advice you’ve ever been given?
SH: “It’s how you show up.” It sounded a bit fluffy at first, but it’s stuck with me more than almost anything else. I even pinned it above my desk at home years ago (see photo). How you walk into a room, how you react when something goes sideways, the energy you bring to a Monday meeting: your team picks up on all of it, usually before you’ve said a word. It’s not about fake positivity, though. Nobody wants a boss grinning through a crisis. It’s about being honest about what’s happening while still bringing some optimism and a bit of silliness. So every day I ask myself: what am I bringing into the room?
9. What’s one thing not on your LinkedIn profile?
SH: I’m fluent-ish in four languages. But once I’m tired, none of them work and my brain takes the path of least resistance: a heavy German accent. Apparently it’s very entertaining to watch.
10. Important last question: Does your mum really know what you do?
SH: I once explained the Connection Gap to her over dinner. She nodded politely and asked if I wanted more potatoes. So, no.
Do you know a great agency executive who’d like to get their very own 10 quick questions? Email [email protected].
