Traction has added LinkedIn Marketing Solutions as a client and former Unilever and IBM executive Babs Rangaiah to lead a new digital transformation consulting practice, the company announced today.

Traction CEO Adam Kleinberg bills the shop as a “growth marketing accelerator for in-house teams,” a shift made in late 2019, just before the onset of the pandemic. San Francisco-based Traction’s workforce is distributed around the U.S. and brought to projects ad hoc, with Rangaiah being no exception. He’ll remain in the New York area, providing consulting services in digital transformation, martech, data, media strategy and the future of television.

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Rangaiah had already launched an executive coaching practice last year dubbed cc:Babs, with the “cc” standing for coaching and consulting—but also a nod to how higher-ups at Unilever routinely told people to “cc Babs” on emails about projects, Rangaiah said, because of his central role.

Rangaiah’s 30 years of experience include having been VP of global communications planning and digital transformation for Unilever; executive partner of management consulting and marketing transformation at iX for IBM; and senior VP of media, promotion and analytics for ViacomCBS.

The LinkedIn account follows a strong year that saw Traction's revenue increase 30%, with expectation that eight accounts added will produce an even stronger 50% to 100% increase this year, Kleinberg said.

He likened Traction less to conventional agencies and more to newer models such as S4 Capital and Brandtech Group (formerly You and Mr Jones, which manages a sprawling in-house content operation for Unilever among others).

Rangaiah joins a team of specialists that Kleinberg calls “a team of creative directors.”

“Instead of one creative director, I’ve got 12,” he said, though many, like Rangaiah, have specialties outside what conventional agencies often have, including performance marketing and product development.

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“We’ve been able to invest in more senior talent working with us on a flexible basis,” Kleinberg said, “and we create bespoke teams to solve client problems.”

Rangaiah sees his role at Traction in part as helping clients move toward working in similar fashion. “Instead of having 500,000 employees the way IBM did, you might have 100,000 of these dedicated full-time employees and 600,000 of people in this liquid workforce—contractors and experts,” he said. COVID-19 and resistance of employees to return to conventional office jobs and commuting is only likely to accelerate that trend, Rangaiah said.