MCN media agencies rollout Digital Forward Plan

Topics included digital integrated into the full circle of media touch points, using new digital technologies, understanding the power of web 2.0, social networking, and empowering today's planners with digital vision for the way forward.

The seminar was led by Christophe Cauvy, Regional Digital Director for McCann Worldgroup, EMEA, who came in from London to share best practices, way forward plans, case studies and implementation ideas. The seminar was held at the Dubai Head Offices for MCN on Wednesday, April 1, 2009.

"MCN media agencies are committed to embracing, embedding and engaging everyday digital channels in their media architecture, and the one day seminar is a huge first steps towards that," said Tom Roychoudhury, Chief Innovations Officer for the group, who organized the event for MCN.

"It's about engaging the consumer, the target audience in a conversation that is digitally empowered, but it has to be integrated into the consumer lifestyle, and one cannot separate digital from mainstream in that context. This seminar is about how to understand that digital slice, it's not about abandoning mainstream media" he added.

"It's imperative for us as an organization to have our media agencies become digitally enabled in their everyday thinking, and particularly in this economy, the importance of digital is crucial," said Mohamad Haidar, MCN's CFO.

MCN Media's plans are to provide umbrella solutions and 360° integrated thinking for clients in digital, marrying digital content and media in a seamless delivery value chain that fits into an overall media scenario.

Christophe Cauvy, who spearheads the McCann digital operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa, felt that "From a creative and consumer insight perspective in the digital domain, the Middle East region is definitely at par with other regions, from what I have seen. The main issue is that digital is not a silo."

He prefers to look at digital in a holistic perspective. "Getting digital right is just half the objective, the real acid test is to ensure that digital is naturally embedded in the overall offering of the agency." he added.

Amol Kadam, Director of Strategy & Creative, Innovations Digital, helped organize the hands-on session. He observed "An impressive workshop that saw planners come up with strategically solid creative ideas and content based plans. It showed that the MCN Media planners were headed in the right direction of truly integrating digital into their domain."

MCN have announced a one year plan to create a community of digitally empowered planners and buyers, where every one in the media agencies 'will have advanced conversations on digital with clients, and have a depth of knowledge across the board' according to the agenda set forth.

Monthly workshops, regional seminars, white papers and mentoring systems are part of the overall plans.