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MediaPost 2006 Online All Star: David Cohen

The Restless Pioneer

David Cohen, Executive Vice President, U.S. Director of Digital Communications, Universal McCann Interactive

David Cohen can thank digital media for many things -- including his wife.

Maybe that's overstating the case a bit, but he and his wife did meet eight-plus years ago at a client meeting. Cohen was working on behalf of Coca-Cola at Thunder House; she was working for MediaVest.

Cohen has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. At 36, he oversees more than 120 digital media professionals and about $300 million in annual billings. Universal McCann Interactive's clients include Microsoft, Sony, Wendy's, and Kohl's.

Cohen started out at Neil Faber Media. Looking back, he says that experience was invaluable to his professional development. "I cut my teeth on traditional media. I did everything from strategic thinking to the nitty-gritty, crappy work," he says. During his six years there, he talked his boss into letting him start a new media unit, convinced of digital media's potential.

Shortly thereafter, he joined Interpublic's Thunder House as its second media employee. Thunder House merged with Zentropy Partners before too long, and Cohen eventually became North American media director.

"Betting on an unknown medium back in 1996 was the riskiest thing I could have done, but I was young and excited and willing to take the chance," he says. "Even then, I could say with 100 percent certainty that this was a tailor-made profession for me."

The Internet bust taught Cohen a few lessons. Now, after the hype of the late 1990s, Cohen is loath to identify a new technology as the next big thing. He says digital media are "at Step Two or Three of a 100-step race" and says that his focus is on "building solid, sustainable business models, rather than getting caught up in the moment."

He's frustrated by the hesitancy of some marketers to fully embrace digital opportunities. "Clients aren't spending what they should, relative to what this medium can deliver," he says.

But he's patient. Kohl's chief branding officer, Julie Gardner, says Cohen helped usher Kohl's into the digital era. "We started by putting a toe in the water; he didn't push us to move at a faster pace than we wanted to," she says, hailing his work on the retailer's "Transformation Nation" and "Generation Transformation" initiatives.

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