MEC Access, the leading entertainment and sports partnerships arm of MEC, has been named “Rightsholder of the Year” at the Gyllene Hjulet Sponsorship and Event Association Awards for the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week partnership.

The Gyllene Hjulet (Golden Wheel) is the Swedish Sponsorship and Event Association’s award which recognises and honours the best creative solutions in the industry. MEC Access was cited for elevating the Swedish fashion scene in Northern Europe, with insightful packaging and outstanding impact beyond the catwalk.

“It’s a fantastic achievement to be named Rightsholder of the Year. At MEC, we are continually focused on exploring new industry-leading opportunities that drive growth for our clients. And as a fully integrated agency it proves that we have an outstanding offer in the sponsorship arena, competing on equal footing with pure-play sponsorship agencies. We’re delighted to share this accolade with our partners at Mercedes-Benz and very proud to be honoured with this prestigious award.” said Daniel Collin, CEO of MEC Sweden.

Christin Ericsson, Project Manager for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, said, “We’re thrilled that Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, under the management of MEC Access, has evolved to become Sweden's best rightsholder event. The Gyllene Hjulet Award proves that this partnership is of the highest standard, and we hope to take Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week to an even higher level!”

MEC Global Solutions, the international arm of MEC, today helped BBC Worldwide launch its biggest ever global marketing campaign.

Themed around the idea of the BBC’s reporters covering the news in a more dynamic way, the refreshed brand identity entitled ‘Live the Story’ will highlight the unique depth and insight offered by the channel.

The immersive and innovative campaign will be heavily focused on digital and will include homepage takeovers of their own channels as well as online ads outside of the UK. The aim is to ensure that the BBC is the first port of call for news across Europe by making the brand feel more dynamic and modern in its new news studio enabled with state of the art technology. QR codes will also be used on print executions inviting users to hear first-hand accounts of the events being reported by those journalists actively living the full story.

The international campaign, focused on Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and the US, will run across television, press, radio, out-of-home and experiential media with the media buying also handled by MEC. There will also be pan-regional media partnerships with titles including The Financial Times and Eurosport.

MEC Bravo, MEC’s Hispanic media company, is launching Precision™, a tool that enables marketers to assess media influence on the purchase pathway of Hispanic consumers and optimize their campaigns for success.

Precision™ combines Kantar Media Audience’s Return Path Data (RPD) services, which provide second-by-second analysis of TV viewing behavior, with consumer shopping data from Kantar Shopcom. Together, these capabilities allow MEC Bravo to create accurate effectiveness and engagement models determining the impact Hispanic advertising has on CPG sales.

The tool assesses the influence that exposure to a branded media message has on Hispanic viewers - as determined by viewing habits - through a variety of metrics, including penetration, dollar buying rate, purchase frequency, dollars spent per trip and units per trip. For example, an initial study found that Hispanics exposed to a specific media campaign spent 18% more on the product compared to non-Hispanics exposed to the same campaign.

Gonzalo del Fa, Managing Director of MEC Bravo commented, “This is a revolutionary tool for the Hispanic market. It’s been a challenge for all of us in the industry to accurately identify Hispanic consumers and understand their purchase activity. With this new tool, that won’t be a problem anymore. By offering valuable and comprehensive insights on the role that media plays in the purchase pathway, this tool will allow us to target Hispanic audiences in a more impactful and addressable way. And this will be invaluable to our clients.”

Precision™ is the first product to emerge from an ongoing effort between Kantar Media and GroupM, the leading global media investment management operation of which MEC is a founding partner. The initiative looks to integrate second-by-second audience viewing data from Kantar Media with other data sets to better define consumer behavior from media consumption through to product usage.

“Kantar Media’s Return Path Data service offers incredibly rich insights into television viewing behavior by hundreds of thousands of households,” states Bud Breheney, Chief Commercial Officer at Kantar Media Audiences North America. “The combination of our RPD data with MEC Bravo’s Hispanic expertise and Kantar Shopcom’s shopping behavior analysis provides marketers with unprecedented levels of information on their campaigns.”

“Personally, I was very impressed with the level of detail you were able to achieve with Precision™,” adds Don Wood, Brand Manager at Campbell’s Beverages. “And by that I mean not only the metrics themselves, but also the confidence around whether consumers were exposed to the advertising and their acculturation levels. In an area that is hard to measure, Precision™ offers a tool that can bolster confidence in the business impact of Hispanic communications.”

Marla Kaplowitz, CEO of MEC North America, a leading global media agency, today announced a series of officer promotions in the U.S.

These promotions are further proof of MEC’s commitment to fostering an inclusive and prosperous working environment.

Six individuals were promoted to managing partner level, and ten were named Senior Partner:

Managing Partners

Christina Dagnello – Christina joined MEC in 1999. She leads the agency’s global Xerox and Chevron client relationships.

Andrea Hartman – Andrea joined MEC in 2000 and has led many businesses from the agency’s Irvine office. Andrea was instrumental in securing the Legal Zoom and Invisalign businesses which she leads today.

Mark Miller – Mark has been with MEC eight years and during this time has developed the Paramount planning team into one of the best and brightest in the entertainment business. He is based in Los Angeles.

Cathy Salazar – Cathy joined MEC in 2009 to lead MEC’s Search practice. She currently plays a senior digital leadership role on the AT&T team.

Sharona Sankar-King – Sharona leads the Digital Analytics Practice across all MEC clients. She is an 18-year veteran who has led analytics teams at Experian, FCB and Digitas. Sharona has developed MEC’s Quantum Attribution platform which synthesizes the best-in-class-techniques of digital attribution and combines it with the most robust cookie level data sources.

Andy Wasef – Andy started his career at MEC UK in 2003 and joined the New York office in 2010. In his newly created position as Head of Innovation and Technology, Andy is responsible for furthering MEC’s commitment to bringing innovative solutions to all our clients, overseeing an agency-wide development program as well as building key partnerships with vendors and the start-up community.

Senior Partners

Joseph Cowan

Alice Dure

Tousanna Durgan

Wilson Hoffnagle

Melissa Jee

Tess Kander

Kate Kohlmann

Charlotte Lim

Chris Senio

Thomas Spilker

Commented Marla Kaplowitz: “Attracting and retaining top talent is critical in my role as CEO. At MEC, we pride ourselves on building a people-centric culture, and nurturing and grooming future leaders of the agency. This group of managing partners and senior partners is comprised of diverse skill sets and personalities, yet singular in their approach to creative problem solving and delivering innovative solutions to clients. I look forward to continuing to watch their growth and helping them achieve their personal and professional goals every step of the way.”

Leading mattress company hires agency for media buying and planning

MEC North America today announced that it has been selected as media agency of record for Simmons Bedding Company (http://www.simmons.com), a 140-year old company and one of the world's largest mattress producers and maker of BEAUTYREST^®. Effective immediately, MEC will be responsible for media planning and buying.

MEC will support the Beautyrest^® and COMFORPEDIC FROM BEAUTYRESTÔ brands with targeted and strategic media efforts, promoting the company’s commitment to help its consumers attain a higher quality of sleep with superior mattresses that provide recharging sleep. Building on Simmons’ successful brand promise, “Living Life Fully Charged®,” MEC will focus much of its efforts around the company’s revolutionary Beautyrest® Recharge technology.

Jeff Willard, EVP of Marketing at Simmons, commented, “We’re thrilled to bring MEC on board to handle media duties. We have undergone a complete brand transformation at Simmons and with this we are are reaching consumers at a level that is unprecedented in Simmons' history. As we set a goal of delivering 2 billion target impressions to our consumers in 2013, MEC’s proven record of using analytics and insights to reach audiences at all touch points, is the perfect fit for our needs. We believe this partnership will help to quickly reestablish Simmons as the leader in the premium bedding market, and can’t wait to start working together.”

“Simmons is the type of client we love to work with- strong leadership, with an agile marketing team who embrace their media agency as partners.” said Eamonn Store, President of MEC Global Solutions. “We’ve moved from contract discussions to media planning in a very short space of time and we’ll be activating our first campaign very soon. This urgency and energy with the client motivates our team to deliver exciting work across paid, owned and earned media chanels.”

The search was conducted internally from the Simmons headquarters in Atlanta, Ga. Simmons manufactures and markets a broad range of products including Beautyrest®, Beautyrest TruEnergy™, Beautyrest Black®, ComforPedic® from Beautyrest®, and BeautySleep®, and operates 19 conventional bedding manufacturing facilities across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Simmons also serves as a key supplier of beds to many of the world's leading hotel groups and resort properties. The new relationship begins immediately.