Staffing Changes and Clean Coffee Cups at MRY

MRY Moms Attempt to Explain What Their Kids Do in Advertising

With the Hallmark holiday around the corner, MRY released a self-explanatory Mother’s Day video entitled “Moms Explain What Their Kids Do in Advertising.”

After (finally) getting the video chat to work, MRY mothers make an effort to explain what it is their children do at MRY — although one mom can’t decide if it’s MRY or MYR. Attempts at job descriptions include “Does Things on the Internet,”  “Supervisor of People” and “Online Advertising Through the Computer Director of the Department in Advertising Twitter Facebook Any-Kind-of-Internet-Kind-of-Thing.” MRY concludes that there’s no question that they love their moms (even if they don’t have a clue).

Moms Explain What Their Kids Do in Advertising in This Agency's Mother's Day Video

Creative and technology agency MRY celebrated Mother’s Day by having its staffers video chat with their moms. And along the way, the moms were asked what they think their kids actually do for a living in advertising.

To say they’re unclear about that is an understatement.

“Ever ask certain family members to explain what you do, and have their response completely miss the mark? Happens in advertising all the time,” the agency says.

Check it out below. And yeah, it has a sappy ending.



MRY West Seeking New ECD

MRY

Just over a year ago, the New York-based Publicis Agency MRY (formerly Mr. Youth) announced its plans to expand with a new office in San Francisco.

The move came after a win on the SF-based StubHub account, which itself followed more dramatic changes: an LBi merger and the hiring of 360i’s David Berkowitz as CMO.

In order to flesh out its West Coast creative team, MRY then hired Brad Cohn – formerly of McCann, BBDO, Y&R, DDB, and FCB Chicago — to serve as its ECD there.

Today we learned that Cohn lasted less than two months in the role and that MRY is still seeking his replacement.

The agency did not offer comment on Cohn beyond confirming his departure, but his online portfolio tells us that he left MRY in January and soon joined Paradise Advertising of St. Petersburg, Florida as its chief creative officer. Paradise, which does not appear to have announced Cohn’s hire, does not yet feature him on its homepage either.

MRY is currently still in the process of seeking a replacement for Cohn in San Francisco.

Here's What Would Happen If Ad Agencies Hired Drones as Employees

Sure, drones are almost taking people’s heads off at TGI Friday’s. But they can be loyal and useful airborne employees for brave ad agencies willing to embrace the future.

Or maybe they’ll just wreak havoc.

Check out the video below, from creative and technology agency MRY, to see what might happen if a creative agency actually hired drones. And check out the New York City Drone Film Festival on March 7, of which MRY is a sponsor.



MRY West Hires New ECD, Wins Del Monte

brad cohnToday MRY named Brad Cohn ECD of its West Coast office (which is about to turn eight months old). The agency also announced that it will be social/digital AOR for top banana Del Monte.

Cohn has a more extensive agency background than most. While the release tells us that he joined MRY from McCann, where he was ECD on the HP account, his resume indicates that he left twofifteenmccann in 2012 after one year with that shop and five years as VP/ECD at McCann Worldgroup San Francisco and spent the past two and a half years working freelance.

The rest of his history reads like a who’s who of Midwestern agencies: art director/copywriter at BBDO and Doner, ACD at DDB, VP/CD at Y&R, creative director on Coors for FCB Chicago.

On Del Monte, the agency will begin handling the client’s social/digital presence this month — but the first campaign complete with activations aimed at “existing canned food consumers” will arrive in early 2015.

Said campaigns will focus on the E-word, “engagement” — and MRY will be part of a team including Starcom MediaVest Group, Saatchi X, Integer, Juniper Park, and PR Hacker.

No word on which clients Cohn will handle at MRY West, though the agency writes that the Del Monte account now leads its Bay Area office’s roster.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

5 Takes on Facebook’s New Ad Platform

The Zuck

One of the biggest announcements at this year’s Advertising Week concerned Facebook and the “relaunch” of its advertising platform, Atlas.

Whether we want to admit it or not, Facebook plays a huge role in determining which ads audiences see — and this move is its attempt to knock Google off the online ad throne. The idea is that Facebook can more effectively show the ads you make and place to people who actually want to watch them…but you knew that already.

We asked five contacts in the ad/marketing industries for their takes on this development.

First, two voices from the (digital) agency world.

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MRY CEO Britton to Oversee Big Fuel

bigfuel_logo

To update our recent post on MRY‘s status in the wake of this month’s Publicis shakeup, we can confirm that founder/CEO Matt Britton will now oversee the operations of both his own agency and fellow New York shop Big Fuel. The agency founded by Avi Savar announced in 2011 that it would sell to Publicis, where it initially served as a “social media center” for Razorfish, Digitas, Zenith and Starcom).

This week Laura Desmond, CEO of the Starcom Mediavest group that now includes both MRY and Big Fuel, announced that their leaders would report to Britton, who will subsequently report to her.

The move has not been announced outside the newly expanded Starcom because it will not reportedly affect any of the services that either agency provides to clients.

While the leaders of both shops will report to Britton moving forward, they will remain operationally independent from one another. (As a reminder, one of Big Fuel’s most recent major staffing moves was the hire of former Dachis Group ECD Jon Resnik as EVP/ECD.)

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MRY Now Part of Starcom MediaVest

mryBefore we received confirmation from agency sources this morning, The Wall Street Journal reported that MRY will indeed become part of the larger Starcom MediaVest Group.

This is just the latest change over at Publicis, which announced last week that Rosetta would fold into Razorfish before a spokesperson clarified that the two shops will remain separate under the shared name.

Apparently, the MRY/Starcom relationship will function in the same way: MRY will continue to operate independently but will fall under the invisible Starcom “umbrella.”

“People familiar with the matter” told the WSJ that it’s all about “[helping] the creative shop leverage SMG’s distribution capabilities”, that “several clients” will work only with MRY, and that there won’t be any subsequent layoffs.

The only staffing change mentioned: MRY founder/CEO Matt Britton will now report to Starcom CEO Laura Desmond and will presumably receive a new title as well.

We reached out to contacts at MRY for comment, but they have yet to respond.

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Agencies Officially Need to Pay Attention to Vine Now

You’ve heard of Vine, right? Of course you have–and we’ll go out on a sturdy limb in suggesting that most of our readers probably don’t think of Twitter’s six-second loop tool as the Next Big Thing in digital marketing.

This week, however, the company unveiled the latest step in its campaign to appeal to those of the agency persuasion: loop counts.

What does that alien phrase mean? Metrics to measure how many times people have clicked on given “vines” have been around for a while, but this one tells us how many times a given clip has looped–and it somehow controls for the “open tab” factor as well. The idea is that viewers will watch the most compelling Vines loop repeatedly, thereby increasing brand retention, etc.

In short, we can now get a better sense of how much Vine campaigns are worth–and, given recent agency trends focusing on more accurate measurement for social media campaigns, some think that this means more shops will have to take Vine seriously.

A few marketing experts weigh in after the jump.

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Cannes 2014: South by Southern France via MRY

After spending the week at the 2014 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the good folks over at MRY have pulled together some key takeaways from their experiences overseas. 

David Berkowitz, Chief Marketing Officer

The biggest surprise for my first year in Cannes was how much the festival resembled another that I’ve been going to for years – South by Southwest. Everywhere along the most populated areas of the Palais and the Croisette were banners for tech brands such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Pinterest, Spotify, and the Mobile Marketing Association. Yachts flew flags of companies such as Celtra, Vibrant Media, and True[x]. Even more traditional brands such as the Daily Mail and Clear Channel were heavily touting their digital offerings. On the main stage, celebrities followed suit, with Patrick Stewart taking a “dronie” (a selfie powered by a drone) for Twitter, and Kanye sharing the secrets behind his famous wedding photo on Instagram. Meanwhile, Volvo Trucks won in B2B for a YouTube campaign, while British Airways triumphed in out-of-home awards for a billboard powered by real-time flight data. 2014 is the year tech totally took over the Lions, and there’s no turning back.

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MRY Names MD for New San Francisco Office

MRY‘s San Francisco office has a new Managing Director.

International agency vet Kingsley Taylor will oversee all “operations, marketing, business development and account servicing” for MRY West, effective immediately. The new office, which opened several weeks ago with approximately ten staffers in a space shared with other Publicis Shops, serves key clients including Adobe, Neutrogena, StubHub and Visa.

Taylor most recently worked as Director of New Business at L.A.’s David&Goliath, but his roots lie in the United Kingdom, where he spent two years in accounts at Oglivy & Mather before transferring to the agency’s New York office; he later held the Senior Partner, Global Business Director position at Ogilvy Los Angeles.

The release notes that Taylor “also served as a client service director at Mile 9? and “held account management jobs in the U.K. at agencies like WDMP and G2?, working with clients ranging from Qualcomm to British American Tobacco and United Biscuits.

MRY founder/CEO Matt Britton writes:

“Kingsley brings a consultative approach to the business, along with energy, passion and an entrepreneurial style that will build on the great work our group has done out in San Francisco. He is a perfect fit for or culture and exactly who we need to spread the MRY love in the Bay Area.”

Taylor will report directly to Britton.

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MRY VISA Spot Marks Michael Sam’s Debut as Spokesman

Michael Sam hasn’t even been drafted yet, but things are looking good for the man who would be the NFL’s first gay player: he’s already signed his first endorsement deal.

Here’s his spot for VISA from MRY and production company Decon, released just in time for the start of the draft:

The message sticks very close to what Sam’s been saying all along: Sure, I’m gay, but it’s no big deal. Just focus on how well I play the game.

Unlike Sam, Auburn’s Greg Robinson got drafted in the second round by The Rams last night. His spot after the jump…

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ROKKAN Media Offering Launches with R/GA, MRY Hires

rokkan-280x187Publicis Groupe’s ROKKAN has officially launched its new media planning/buying offering, and its staff already includes three industry vets:

  • Sean Miller, who is SVP of strategy, most recently worked in the strategy/planning department at R/GA New York
  • Lindsay Williams, VP of media and analytics, joins the agency from Estee Lauder, where she was global brand director; prior to that role she worked with several clients at Razorfish
  • Joe Meanor will serve as VP of client partnership. He joins ROKKAN from MRY, where he worked as group director

CEO/managing partner John Noe explains the offering’s purpose:

“Media is actually something we’ve been doing for several of our clients over the last couple of years, albeit in a bit of an ad-hoc fashion.”

As client requests for paid services increased, Noe and team decided to launch the new offering, which is less an independent unit than a “natural progression” of the agency’s existing services.

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MRY Launches ‘JägerBonds’ App for Jägermeister

Speaking of MRY today, the agency has teamed up with Jägermeister to create the new app, “JägerBonds.”

The new app “transforms images and videos from multiple users’ social media posts into a video highlight reel of a group’s night out with Jägermeister” — kind of a cool idea, and one that should appeal to the young folks who comprise Jägermeister’s target demographic. Since the app is free, and easy to use, it could catch on with the right crowd. It’s a good example of a social campaign that offers people a service tied to the brand rather than just trying to sell them something.

“When the average Jägermeister consumer goes out, they typically have a drink in one hand and a mobile phone in the other,” says Heather Kozera, director of digital marketing for Sidney Frank Importing Company, Inc. “The JägerBonds app puts Jägermeister in both hands of the consumer, creating a useful and meaningful connection between a great night out and this iconic brand.”

The JägerBonds app is available to download for free at the iTunes and Google Play stores. Users simply connect the app to their social media accounts and invite friends to join along with coded “Bonds.” Then, when everyone posts to social media during their night out, JägerBonds compiles the posts and pairs them with music to document the event.

MRY, which was named the brand’s digital agency of record last October, managed all promotions, in addition to designing and developing the app. Supporting executions include “online and mobile engagements, as well as Out of Home elements in close to a dozen target markets.” MRY described the campaign’s strategy as being “to evolve the way Millennials think of Jägermeister by making the brand name synonymous with ‘uncommonly great nights.’” Check out the video above to see the app in action.

 

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