Daale Carter became BBDO Worldwide's first chief client experience officer late last year, taking on a mandate that most agency networks have never created a role for: designing what it actually feels like to work with the agency.

"Often agency networks focus their effort on creativity, new tools, and driving results, but not on what it really feels like to work with us," Carter told Marketing Brew in its weekly Coworking series. "What we make is just as important as how we show up."

Carter, who previously served as president of BBDO Chicago, describes her job in plain terms: "I help brands understand what they need to do to help their business grow." That work spans helping clients better understand the audiences they need to reach, offering perspectives from outside their industries, and coaching BBDO's own teams to be stronger strategic partners.

Building an experience function

The core of her brief is institutional. Carter is setting up a client experience function across the entire BBDO network, on the premise that client relationships fail when the connection fades.

"Loyalty breaks down when clients don't feel connected, so I'm building an experience—one that is designed, intentional, and consistently delivered—that is uniquely BBDO and ensures our client relationships are built and maintained correctly," she said.

Her priority is keeping the client point of view from getting lost inside the agency's process, ensuring BBDO deliberately designs the experience it wants clients to have rather than leaving it to chance.

The campaign she admires

Asked about her favorite campaign, Carter pointed not to a single execution but to a body of work: EA Sports, across the board. "They were thinking about influencer marketing and creators two decades before anyone else was—at that point it was called grassroots marketing," she said. That early bet on creators, in her view, is why the gaming giant has "been able to claim and retain their place in culture despite how much has changed in the gaming industry."

On AI: community over fear

Carter splits her outlook on marketing's biggest storyline. Her optimism sits with "the rise of people-based, community-based marketing as a response to AI." Her pessimism targets the discourse around the technology itself: "Scaremongering associated with tech and innovation and AI. People should get to understand it before they run from it."

For industry watching, she recommends Word on the Curb. "Everyone has consumer insights, but his unique take is thought-provoking," she said.

One biographical detail absent from her LinkedIn: Carter trained as a dancer and planned to pursue it professionally before becoming a lawyer and, eventually, an agency executive.

Her role signals where large agency networks are heading next. After decades of competing on creative product and tooling, BBDO is now competing on the relationship itself—and Carter's network-wide function will test whether designed, intentional client experience can become a durable differentiator.