John Moore - Ad Age Media Maven 2010

Mullen’s commitment to keeping media and creative closely connected has been rewarded as our Chief Media Officer John Moore has been recognized as an Advertising Age Media Maven.  As you’ll see in the Ad Age report, John was given this prestigious award based on his passion for media innovation, his major contributions to the agency’s new business success and innovative media executions that our mediahub group created recently for Olympus, Timberland and Zappos.

John joins a group of 18 media luminaries selected by Ad Age including, Brandy Ruff from Mullen client Alberto-Culver, Christopher Batty from Gawker, Ian Tait from Wieden & Kennedy, Brian McMahon from IPG’s Orion Trading, Seth Kaufman from Pepsico, David Levy from Turner Broadcasting and Colleen Fahey Rush from MTV Networks.

It’s been a couple of great weeks for mediahub, which also picked up a series of awards for media innovation from The AdClub recently. However, all is not rosy for John, as his beloved Boston College Eagles got wrecked by Virginia Tech over the weekend.  Hopefully being named an Ad Age Media Maven will ease the pain.

John Moore in the Mullen Media Lab

John Moore is a fast moving, intense guy. He’s a force of change in our agency always trying to push the limits of creativity and innovation in the use of media. John’s had his hands on a lot of the cool things we’ve done for Timberland, Ask.com and Match.com among others.

We’re happy to announce that John is now leading mediahub, Mullen’s full-service media planning/buying group. Moore was recognized for his leadership in launching and building Mullen’s Ideas and Innovation practice.  He takes over mediahub from Steve Calder who just recently joined Hewlett-Packard in a global media position.

“John is a vocal champion for progressive, digital and social media; and he’s a huge catalyst for media-creative fusion,” said Joe Grimaldi, Mullen’s president and ceo.

“I’ve witnessed a tremendous transformation of the media discipline in the last 20 years,” said Moore. “However, it’s still not moving fast enough. Too many entities are clinging to the past and not embracing the new realities. Data is exploding, enabling us to create the same kind of laser like communication in offline that we currently have in online. Every media professional needs to understand the fluidity and portability of content and that media is about activating experiences consumers will seek out, share and talk about.”

Over20+ years in media Moore has worked on some of the most respected brands in America including Wendy’s, General Motors, Whirlpool, H&R Block, NEC, L.L.Bean, Monster and XM Satellite Radio. He has won two prestigious Mediaweek “Media Plan of the Year” awards for Wendy’s and Monster.com.

On a personal note, John is a big Boston College sports fan and is at most of the football games cheering on his beloved Eagles and his daughter who is part of the elite BC dance team. His daily reads include Silicon Valley Insider, TechCrunch and StumbleUpon.

You can followed John on twitter @jmoore700.

Mullen’s mediahub has just added to the seemingly insane number of mobile apps with the launch of “Expedition Timberland,” a branded app for the iPhone/iTouch (went live on 9/10) and for the Blackberry Curve, Storm, Bold and Pearl  (goes live on 9/21). We got into the branded mobile app game with eyes wide open. We know that:

• There are more than 100,000 mobile apps currently in circulation
• <1% have long-term usage
• Only approximately 20% of consumers go back to an app after an initial download and usage

Sounds like a lot of trees falling in the forest with no one listening. Well, Timberland is all about sustainability so we tried to give them an app that will last.

While other outdoor brands have dabbled in the app space, we built something that connects casual city-dwelling lifestyles with a passion for the outdoors. “Expedition Timberland” (developed with Ansible) has city guides for hiking, biking, secret spots for relaxing and the best city views. There’s a game called “Timber Trail;” a music component; a gear section; a WAP site with a full product catalog, click-to-call functionality and store locators.

So we built a cool app. That’s not enough. Did I mention there are 66,000 apps out there? Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. Loyalty in mobile is extremely fleeting. If you’re going to do it, you have to build a compelling and engaging experience. You have to give the consumer a voice in shaping the experience. And, most importantly, you have to promote it. To that end, Timberland is putting significant money into mobile media support including ads on Quattro and Jump-Tap, as well as in-store point-of-purchase advertising, dedicated email, direct mail and support on timberland.com.

The customized app is launching in six cities – NYC, LA, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Denver. We’re letting people vote on which cities it rolls into next.

And how will we measure success? Downloads, time spent with the application, unique and repeat users, use over time, measurement of mobile media (CTRs etc), AppStore ratings, and click to call usages (sales). We’ll be using Pinch Media for iPhone analytics.

We’re hoping to crack the code on breakthrough branded apps. Please download it and tell us what you think.