MEC

His agency was the product of a merger between two others; now Carl Fremont wants the industry to keep thinking differently. In this video interview, the president of the Wavemaker/Wunderman alliance urges advertisers and agencies to change their approach to meeting consumers’ expectation for a great experience. “Every brand really needs to find out what’s […]

Although it can be “very overwhelming” for brands to rationalize multiple audience segments and customized creative iterations, doing so can unlock sales growth and lower the cost of customer acquisition. “To serve one set of content or one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work anymore and it’s very wasteful,” says Rick Acampora, Chief Operating Officer at Wavemaker […]

Consumer purchases aren’t made in a vacuum. Which is why understanding all of the variables that precede actual purchases is the key to unlocking the consumer journey. “The idea that you go somewhere, you decide you want something, you make that purchase and then you’re done is incorrect. Inherently it just doesn’t make sense. It […]

Creativity in media is less about pushing one big message out to lots of people than it is generating conversations with consumers at every step of their purchase journey, says David Gaines, Chief Strategy Officer, Wavemaker US. “We’re moving away, I would argue, from media planning and saying ‘well, we actually need a content strategy,’” […]

Few people would contend that the modern consumer journey leading to purchases of products and services is easy to understand. But for Wavemaker, it’s a distinct way to both differentiate itself from other agencies while helping brand marketers cope with fragmentation and focus on optimizing the right things. This is why Wavemaker’s “principal and defining […]

The traditional consumer purchase “funnel” doesn’t carry much weight with new marketing agency Wavemaker. “A lot of communication agencies out there look at the purchase journey as a funnel and really it’s not that whatsoever. It’s actually quite cyclical,” says Derek Bhopalsingh, VP, Digital, Wavemaker Canada. The new GroupM agency that launched in the U.S. […]

How do you reboot an agency to take on more of marketers’ problems in a world where consumer change is fast and furious? In the case of GroupM’s Wavemaker, it’s thinking far beyond simply combining agencies Maxus and MEC. “It has to be more than a merger. If all we did was take two great […]

ORLANDO – Marriott hotels knows a lot about what people talk about on social media and it’s become “a content machine” fueled by data and technology. “In our work for Marriott, we talk about customer centricity all the time,” says Tej Desai, Managing Partner at agency MEC. A year ago, Marriott itself comprised 19 different […]

About four months from the merging of MEC and Maxus, Starcom veteran Amanda Richman has been chosen as CEO USA of the as-yet unnamed entity. Coming on board in October, Richman will report to MEC Global CEO Tim Castree. “Amanda is a fantastic choice to be our US leader,” Castree said in a news release. […]

CANNES – As long as television and premium video remain atop the ROI stack for marketers, agencies need to solve convergence of the two for their marketer clients. If they don’t, they could be disintermediated by giants like Facebook and Google and knocked down a rung on the value chain by new entrants like Accenture. […]

CANNES – U.S. television broadcasters can take solace in the fact that it’s not just their world that is being upended by digital distribution. The same thing is happening in Latin America. “Everybody’s trying to reinvent themselves in one way or another,” says Renato de Paula, CEO of MEC Latin America. “We are experiencing video […]

CANNES – So many video ad units and platforms, so many ways to attribute value to those units. “Trying to figure out the value of a video ad unit depending on where it runs seems to be one of our challenges as an industry,” says Shenan Reed, MEC’s Chief Digital Officer for North America. And […]

CANNES – Even if unified cross-screen audience measurement remains a bridge too far at present, understanding linear television audiences gets better all the time. This is something that A+E Networks can attest to following an engagement with TV analytics firm 605 in which ad exposure data was matched with transactional records. The result, as moderator […]

CANNES – What constitutes “premium content” is in the eye of the beholder. So rather than trying to ascertain a common definition, one’s time is better spent understanding the drivers of ROI while taking into account things like environment, ad formats and targeting. “That’s really more what we’re focused on versus worrying too much about […]

CANNES – Global agency MEC has a bias against bias. Toward the top of the list is “unconscious bias” and it’s become an acute problem in a day and age when agencies are facing more competitors than ever. “We’ve done an awful lot of work on unconscious bias. It’s a huge thing in our industry,” […]

CANNES – Having spent nearly four decades in advertising, Carl Fremont perceives artificial intelligence as “beyond transformational” and “completely disruptive.” For their part, marketers need to be brave and experiment with AI while not thinking short term about it, Fremont says in this interview Beet.TV with The Weather Company CMO Jordan Bitterman at the Cannes […]

CANNES – Solving the challenges of optimizing advanced television and premium video surely will provide better audience targeting and advertising performance. But just as important, it’s also a “bulwark” for agencies to defend their turf against consultants and other forms of disintermediation. This is the viewpoint that Tim Castree brought to global advertising and media […]

VIEQUES, PR – Six years ago, the NewFronts were birthed to serve a burgeoning video marketplace. Sellers hoped to cash in on consumer viewing behavioral shifts while charging advertisers broadcast television-like CPM’s. “Guess what happened? Nobody was buying,” recalled Carl Fremont, Global Chief Digital Officer at media agency MEC. That’s because there was no measurement […]

VIEQUES, PR – Knowing what different types of triggers impact consumers during their purchase journey must be done on a brand by brand basis before determining how to find those consumers. “We have to first start with an insight,” says MEC’s Global Chief Digital Officer, Carl Fremont. At MEC, the process is called Momentum and […]

BARCELONA — All the world is a mobile screen – but that doesn’t mean mobile advertising can use a one-size-fits-all approach. That is according to one exec running mobile strategy within a media agency. “There’s so much mobile consumption, the inventory is potentially infinite in supply,” MEC Interaction mobile head Jide Sobo tells Beet.TV in […]