• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 2, 2008

After nearly 10 years, hundreds of TV spots, and countless creative awards with McCann-Erickson Tel Aviv, Oren Frank took it upon himself in 2005 to create a digital unit for McCann Worldgroup in Israel. The division, McCann Digital, was so successful that in January 2008, McCann tapped Frank, 44, as Worldwide Chief Creative Officer of MRM Worldwide in New York.

Still settling into the city and his new role at the bleeding edge of the digital frontier, Frank recently sat down with Online Media Daily to discuss the all-encompassing power of platforms, the fate of media planning and MRM's industrywide image problem.

OMD: Globally, you expect 70% to 80% of MRM Worldwide's resources will be devoted to digital by the end of the year. Are your clients prepared for such a dramatic shift?

Frank: Actually, most of our clients are already there. In most big markets, MRMWW is already a full digital shop--the U.S., UK, Germany, China. If you look at Microsoft and Intel as examples, they already spend most of their marketing dollars on Web and digital efforts. As for the rest of our clients and surely for new business, I guess the question is not if, but when.

OMD: Would you explain your theory on platforms--where you say clients will spend most of their marketing dollars--and how it challenges existing media planning and buying models?

Frank: Brand platforms are at the core of brand assets and equity-building measures in a digital world. Most of today's brand consumers start their interaction by either searching for a product/brand or directly typing its "name.com." They spend more time engaging the brand on the Web than any other screen/medium, and it is their decision to engage or not.

What follows is that this platform or ecosystem of your brand's presence on the Web is your biggest asset. Your best way to attract consumers to your brand platform is to engage them with brand experience, personalization, participation, new services and new products. "Generation V" is made up of utilitarian consumers, and they will always ask "what's in it for me" and will always ignore "advertising" messages and disruptive approaches.

Why do I think so much money will go there? It's the differentiator and the place where you would launch your best new ideas. Think Nike ID and Nike+: Both offer the full scale of brand platform--from experience to new product--via participation and personalization. It is where the consumer is where money will be spent. In the past it was TV carpet bombing using montage to its extreme form; in the present it's on the Web, using the above-mentioned. In the future the digital ecosystem will expand and evolve to mobile and other digital end units.

OMD: I must be mistaken, but have you actually predicted the extinction of media planning and buying within three years?

Frank: I think the problem here is almost "Wittgensteinian" in the sense that it deals with how language describes reality. We keep trying to stretch ideas that belong in a previous era, and try to use the same language we used in the past to describe it--only it's irrelevant.

"Media planner and buyer" refers to a sort of very vertical specialization that is no longer possible. When the idea/creative/platform/product/service--choose what suits you, it's all the same--is no longer separate from the "media," the language is wrong. The digital realm is not a media--it's much more than that. This is why we're all going lateral and flat.

When you write a new Facebook application that allows you, say, to create a separate group of your family, and add genealogy and family tree searching, you created an idea that incorporates the media in it. When you launch Nike+ and Lance Armstrong congratulates you on a good run, is this new media? It's all of the above, and I suspect that if you can "only" negotiate the price for that, your role will be very limited, if at all. Smart people who know a lot about a lot is what we'll need, not one-trick ponies.

OMD: Isn't there a risk of clients cutting their budgets if the traditional planning and buying channels are no longer available to them?

Frank: I think they will have to put all of that money and more into creating better products, services and tangible value in order to invite their consumer to prefer their brands for good, valid reasons. Most of the money will be spent on the platform itself, with the unique utility and content it will include. Much less of it will go to "media" as in channels. Think of Apple: I think 90% of their "creative" and marketing is in the product itself--not in the surrounding hot air. They understood seven years ago that the product itself, and the way you consume/use it, amounts to a digital experience, and leads to brand engagement and advocacy. This is why the iPod was, first of all, a new product, with a new interface, and so on with the MacBooks, MacAir, and so on. By the way, I think "traditional advertising"--what an awful term--was very cheap in the way it achieved its market share and sales goals--investing in heavy R&D is much more expensive.

OMD: How does MRM's data expertise lend itself to this new paradigm?

Frank: Oh, that's one we could spend a full day discussing, and I would love to arrange it when you're really bored. Let's just say that in a digital/networked world, your biggest asset is your raw data--ask Google and Yahoo, they'll tell you it's their business model. The next-biggest asset is your ability to understand and leverage this data. The sheer numbers included with every marketing move today are mind-boggling. Your ability to invent, develop and deploy tools that allow you to really analyze data in real time is priceless. When you have 3 million unique visitors a month, you need an automated system to optimize your platform's performance and response--otherwise you're out of it and don't even know why. Ask any performance-based ad network, and they'll tell you there's real technology and development involved.

OMD: By your reckoning, consumer engagement in a post-digital world involves four stages--experience; interaction; service; and product. Is this model appropriate for every brand?

Frank: Probably not. Only the ones that want to survive and prosper. Seriously, I don't think there's any brand that will find it irrelevant or wrong today--because of one very basic reason: the consumer has transformed for good, and this is the new paradigm for them. To take the discussion to the extreme, I don't think you'd succeed today even in launching a new home for the golden age without broadband in all its suites.

OMD: What's the difference between disruption and engagement?

Frank: Have a look at one of my favorite blogs, gapingvoid.com. That guy used to say that if you speak to people the way advertising does, they'll punch you in the face...The language that assumes you know what's good for me is the same language that assumes it's legitimate to "disrupt" me for marketing purposes. When it was successful in the past, it was mainly due to great entertainment value.

As the consumer today has all the power and clout on his side, you have to offer yourself politely and add real tangible value at every engagement--or else they'll just leave, or in the worse case, mash up, ridicule, spread, write a blog, and do all they can so that others know you're stupid.

OMD: Is MRM ready for the mobile marketing revolution--if it ever comes?

Frank: MRMWW works closely with Ansible (part of IPG) on mobile digital platforms. We have the technology needed to operate in this field and we're ready. The question if/when this revolution will happen is very subjective. One could argue that with over 4 billion handsets already sold, 130%-150% penetration in advanced markets, and an extremely successful business model for networks and handsets manufacturers, the revolution is a thing of the past.

I believe that following the Web, in terms of service and utility, the news will come from location-based service ideas. Your place in time and space as a mobile consumer changes the context of your decisions at every street corner. Smart marketers will capitalize on this, and will offer new ideas there.

The good news is that you don't need to invent the future there--one visit to Korea or Japan and you'll have enough ideas to keep you going for years--and the other good news is that unlike the Web, mobile consumers are used to paying for services and content, so monetization is not an issue.

OMD: What is the biggest challenge facing the evolution of digital marketing, and how can it be overcome?

Frank: I think the need to handle and contain accelerated change is extremely challenging. Marketing and advertising are basically very traditional trades that did not change much in the last 50 years. (Doyle Dane) Bernbach, Procter & Gamble, and their generation "wrote the book" and invented the disciplines and processes needed, and over the years became a guild for the way we do things here. Having to let go of such tradition, which was successful for so many decades, is very demanding. There is no "new book" either. Accelerated change is a constant--look at what happened to social networks in just 3 years--and as a professional today, you need to spend a couple of hours a day just keeping up with the news and changes--and it's never enough. Basically, as this is a brand-new consumer, it's also a new profession. It's not "evolved" or "digitized," it's new.

OMD: You say MRM isn't properly recognized for its smarts, or as in innovator within the industry. Can that marketing problem be solved digitally?

Frank: In branding terms, MRMWW suffers from a brand that was invented in an old world, and its name still carries some of the old meanings, while its product and business moved forward. By the way, I personally prefer to be in that position, than the reverse, where reality lags after perception. This is common today in many big offline agencies, and is much more difficult to manage. Back to us--the work, technology, capacity, quality of the team, and amounts of gray matter are very impressive. I can still say that as a newcomer. This issue problem can and should be solved digitally--we all should eat our own cooking.