• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 27, 2010

MRM Worldwide on Tuesday named Jonathan Kish as EVP, director of strategy for its East Region, which is comprised of agency offices in New York, Princeton, N.J., and Detroit.

Effective immediately, Kish will oversee a team of 20 strategists working across all accounts, including General Motors, Diageo, ExxonMobil, the U.S. Army and Nikon.

Kish most recently served as group VP of strategy at McCann Erickson in Tel Aviv, which he joined in 2002. There, his team of 20 helped the agency win upwards of 30 Effies, more than half of which were Grand or Gold.

"He stood out among the strategic leaders of our industry globally," Corey Mitchell, managing director of MRM's New York office since 2008, said of Kish.

Kish has worked on accounts for some of Israel's largest companies as well as some of its leading global brands, including Leumi Bank, El Al Airlines, Microsoft, Volvo, Yoplait and Axe. He also has deep experience in new business, successfully leading pitches to win business from Unilever and Red Bull, among others.

As part of his role as Group VP strategy at McCann Israel, Kish established the digital strategy discipline for McCann Digital and its clients.

Kish is the latest in a string of new hires that joined MRM New York throughout 2009, the most recent being EVP, General Manager, Brand Leadership and Operations Marc Fleishhacker, who started in January.

Hiring talent is not the only way that MRM is attempting to differentiate itself. Earlier this year, Vipin Mayar, EVP, global director of data and analytics at MRM Worldwide, said the agency was working on what he called "a big project" to improve on the "engagement score" -- or the process by which marketers assign points to engagement.

The best way to do this, said Mayar, is to tee up an analytics model that assigns different values to different engagements and interactions -- and then link those engagements to specific outcomes. The key is "connecting metrics to value creation," Mayar said.