Fig hires former Accenture Song exec as its first chief strategy officer

Amber Higgins is joining independent agency Fig as its first chief strategy officer.

Higgins, who was previously head of brand strategy at Accenture Song, also spent three years at Meta as head of brand strategy and operations and was on the team responsible for its evolution from Facebook.

Higgins said she was attracted to the Fig role because it allowed her to work somewhere independent and “creative forward.”

“I've really tried everything,” said Higgins, who also spent 10 years at Wieden+Kennedy working for clients such as Airbnb, Verizon, Chobani, Samsung, Chrysler and Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“I've been in product-led organizations, sales-led organizations, and creatively-led organizations, and the creatively led ones are certainly where I feel like those are my people and I get my energy from and I feel like I can help more being the strategist in the equation,” she said.

Higgins declined to share specifics on clients and the type of work she did while at Accenture Song.

“As a person with an agency background, I think we’ve always been curious about consultants, the nature of their relationships being so upstream,” Higgins said. “In consulting, you know when it’s for you and when it’s not for you. It just wasn’t for me."

Look back: Accenture Song hires Jason Keher (from 2022)

Until now, Fig did not employ someone with the chief strategy officer title, but it had a head of strategy, Samantha Deevy, who departed from the agency this year. The decision to create a first-time CSO role came as the agency looks to “uplevel the quality” of its creative work, said Fig CEO Judith Carr-Rodriguez.

While Higgins will be focused directly on clients, her role will also include working with Mark Figliulo, Fig’s creative chairman and founder, and Fredrick Stallings, its chief data officer, on plans to expand the agency’s AI and machine learning-powered data tool StoryData, Carr-Rodriguez said.

StoryData has been used by Fig to launch campaigns for clients such as Ketel One and to win business with Viator. The tool has driven 10% of the agency’s revenue since it launched six years ago, Fig told Ad Age in June.

“[AI] is a great tool because you can do volume at speed,” Higgins said. “It has a lot of challenges, just like every other tool we use. Sometimes there are methodology issues. Sometimes the way in which we leverage things and utilize them for analysis needs to be questioned and challenged. ... The way that Fig has adopted an early understanding of how it can be leveraged to benefit what we do in a very clarifying and beneficial way is very impressive.”