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Mediabrands named ‘Media Agency Holding Company of the Year’ by MEDIA Magazine

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

MediaDailyNews Editor’s Note

The editors of MEDIA magazine have selected Interpublic’s Mediabrands division as the Media Agency Holding Company of the Year, and Havas’ MPG unit as the Media Agency of the Year for 2009.

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners took top honors among full-service agency media departments for the third year in a row. U.S. International Media was named MEDIA’s first ever “Independent of the Year.”

Publicis’ Spark Communications was named Media Boutique of the Year. Hulu was named the Media Supplier of the Year.

The awards are based on three primary criteria, including: strategic vision, innovation and industry leadership. MEDIA will publish a special “Agency of the Year” awards supplement in January profiling the winners and detailing their achievements. A gala awards show honoring the recipients will be held in New York, the evening of Jan. 11th.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=117689#

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Mediabrands Thinks ‘Hyper Local’ With Geomentum

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Dave Walker to helm new unit at IPG-owned shop

Aug 6, 2009

- Steve McClellan
NEW YORK In a bid to help marketers execute highly-targeted strategies across the fragmented media landscape, Interpublic Group’s Mediabrands has launched a practice called Geomentum.

The new unit offers consulting, research, planning and activation for traditional and emerging channels in the so-called “hyper-local” sector. Basically, hyper-local media include all outlets that allow clients to target customers in regions smaller than a Nielsen TV market (DMA). Specific zip codes, city blocks or even individual households come into play, with ad messages delivered via interactive TV, zoned editions of newspapers, Yellow Pages, outdoor media and local search.

Dave Walker (pictured above) has been appointed CEO of Geomentum. He will continue to oversee sibling newspaper planning and buying specialist NSA, which now becomes part of the Geomentum operation along with several other specialty units such as outdoor-advertising shop OSI and Wahlstrom, a firm that focuses on directory marketing, mobile, search and social networking.

In July, Mediabrands hired John Ross for the new position of president of its Emerging Media Lab. In addition to running the lab, Ross is tasked with developing a broader retail practice, and he will work closely with Geomentum to reach that goal.

Combined, the specialty units under Geomentum’s purview account for $2 billion in annual spending by IPG clients, or about 20 percent of those clients’ total media expenditures.

According to Walker, about a half-dozen IPG clients have signed up for Geomentum services, and the unit will pitch other current accounts while also aggressively pursuing outside prospects ranging from national corporations to neighborhood businesses. Per Walker, a key for Geomentum is its ability to deploy the latest technology and analytic modeling techniques to help clients manage inventory distribution and cost-of-goods ROI on a “store-by-store, hyper-local basis.”

“We’ve created a paradigm where we’re delivering media-driven marketing,” he said. “That’s really at core the driving principle behind Geomentum.” Walker brings significant client-side insight to the job, having served as a senior marketing executive at companies including Toys R Us and Circuit City.

He reports to Nick Brien, CEO of Mediabrands, who said in a statement that the new entity “has the means and talent in place to revolutionize the local media industry.”

Mediabrands has recently hired several executives with marketing backgrounds to help Walker manage the new unit. These execs include Mike Hayes, chief strategy, development and operations officer; Jeff Haines, chief client officer; and Bob Bukala, chief financial and administrative officer.

“Business performance management is the underpinning of media-driven marketing,” said Hayes. “The fragmentation of media is creating a million different choices and ROI pressure points. We think Geomentum provides a framework for deciding the right media mix.

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Mediabrands Launches “GEOMENTUM”

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

MEDIABRANDS LAUNCHES “GEOMENTUM,” THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY’S LARGEST HYPER-LOCAL MARKETING AND MEDIA AGENCY

Mediabrands Enables Clients To Tailor Local Media Usage To Maximize Retail Impact

New York, August 6th, 2009 – Nick Brien, President and CEO of Mediabrands, today announces the launch of Geomentum, the advertising industry’s largest hyper-local marketing and media insights agency.  As a new center of excellence within Mediabrands, Geomentum unites hyper-local marketplace intelligence, proprietary technology and unrivaled local targeting capabilities to unlock the power of precision marketing and media investing.  With the proliferation of hyper-local data and insights, and local targeting capabilities emerging across many media, Geomentum enables marketers to pin-point their customers and plan the most relevant and responsive media down to the zip-code and even neighborhood block level.

Geomentum has been in development for more than two years.  A next generation business unit, Geomentum combines and integrates the best of consultancy, technology and media agency expertise for a range of clients in categories such as Retail, CPG, Financial Services, Telecommunications, QSR, and Automotive.  Geomentum is led by CEO Dave Walker, a former head of Marketing for Toys “R” Us, Musicland and Circuit City.  The creation of Geomentum marks Phase Two of Mediabrands Retail 3.0 solution, which began with the appointment of John Ross, to President of the Emerging Media Lab.

Creating a new standard for local media planning and activation, Geomentum applies a bottom-up approach, beginning with local level data (i.e.: sales, traffic, lead generation, etc.), to build and measure ROI, and then activates plans across targeted media and markets.  Geomentum extends and enhances the best-in-class resources and massive buying clout of Mediabrands’ current hyper-local agencies; NSA Media (Print), Wahlstrom (Local Search and IYP) and Outdoor Services (Out-of-Home).  In 2009 Geomentum will plan and place more than $2B in hyper-local media, according to RECMA.

Geomentum will also enrich Initiative, UM and the Specialty Service Groups ability to interpret local market data and enhance the effectiveness of media tied to a geographic unit.  Geomentum will closely integrate with other Mediabrands business units such as mobile (Ansible), search and social marketing (Reprise Media) and also work in partnership with third-party addressable media platforms as they evolve to support hyper-targeting capabilities (i.e. Navic, Canoe, Visible World, etc.).

As a multidimensional offering, Geomentum will impact the market in the following four ways:

  1. HYPER-LOCALIZED, FACT-BASED DECISION MAKING: Delivers customized geography-based evaluation of local market conditions from localized macro-economic conditions to weather patterns to competitive forces; providing key intrinsic and extraneous factors affecting marketing efforts.
  2. REDEFINING MEDIA PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: Powered by geographically aligned sales data and insight, establishes a closed-loop performance management process and framework, supported by decision support tools, resulting in custom plans – by market and custom local multi-channel media activation.
  3. CUSTOMER BEHAVIORAL DATA DRIVES IMMEDIATE RESULTS: Insights developed through advanced statistical analysis techniques supported by propriety tools and technologies.  Seeks first to understand customer responsiveness and behaviors to media and marketing communications and then expands and refines insights and plans to optimize performance through testing and measurement of alternative hyper-local media mix variations.
  4. RETAIL REVITALIZATION: Marketers gain more control over local market variations, thus cementing all metrics in hyper-local ROI (i.e. trade dollars, TRPs, promotional lift, comp. sales).  Momentum builds through every dollar of local market investment.  Geomentum simplifies the complex work of deep unit-level analysis and optimization of results.

“Geomentum starts from the premise that all sales are local.  Many marketers want to align with that singular insight, but the complexity of such an effort has proved overwhelming, until now,” says Dave Walker, CEO Geomentum.  “We’ve leveraged hyper-local data, with sophisticated technology and analytic methods to make hyper-local media considerations not only possible, but simple.”

“With its immense volume and scale, Geomentum’s infrastructure has the means and talent in place to revolutionize the local media industry,” says Nick Brien, President and CEO Mediabrands.  “Geomentum is ahead of the mass-localization curve and presents a major commercial motivation for media owners and technology providers to evolve their products to enable hyper-local addressability and targetability for marketers with a local presence.”

Geomentum Management: Dave Walker is supported by an executive team with extensive client-side marketing, technology and consultancy experience, including Mike Hayes, Chief Strategy, Development and Operations Officer (a former Retail SVP of Marketing and Senior Executive with Accenture), Jeff Haines, Chief Client Officer (also a former Retail SVP of Marketing and Merchandising) and Bob Bukala, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer (former CFO for Hewlett Packard’s Consulting Division).

About Geomentum: As a new center of excellence within Mediabrands, Geomentum unites hyper-local marketplace intelligence, proprietary technology and unrivaled hyper-local targeting capabilities to unlock the power of precision marketing and media investing.  With the proliferation of hyper-local data and insights, and hyper-local targeting capabilities emerging several media, Geomentum enables marketers to pin-point their customers and plan the most relevant and responsive media down to the zip-code and even neighborhood block level.   Geomentum applies a bottom-up approach, beginning with hyper-local level data (i.e.: sales, traffic, lead generation, etc.), to build and measure investment return, and then activates plans across a network of local media and markets.  Geomentum will extend and enhance the best-in-class resources and massive buying clout of Mediabrands’ three current hyper-locally oriented agencies – NSA Media (Print), Wahlstrom (Hyper-Local Search) and Outdoor Services (Out of Home) – Geomentum will plan and place over $2B in hyper-local media in 2009.

About Mediabrands: Created by IPG to manage all of its global media-related assets, Mediabrands employs 6,500 communications specialists operating in 90 countries and manages $30B in global media billings.  A proven entity in helping clients maximize the impact of their marketing investment to deliver explosive business results, Mediabrands enhances the communications offering and performance across its network of media agencies including Initiative, UM, MAGNA and a roster of Specialty Service Groups.  Mediabrands is part of Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG), one of the world’s leading organizations of advertising agencies and marketing services companies.  For more information, please visit www.mediabrandsww.com.

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