Millward Brown Appoints Media Research Chief

Millward Brown Group has appointed Brian Jacobs to head its newly created Media Research Unit. Jacobs will be based in London but will report directly to USA-based global CEO, Bob Meyers.

Jacobs is well-known throughout the media industry on both sides of the Pond. He spent 14 years with Leo Burnett, moving on to be MD of Carat International and most recently EVP, Regional Director, Europe, Middle East and Africa at Universal McCann. He was one of the first non-US citizens to be awarded the prestigious Ad Age 'Media Maven' award, and is co-author with Dr Simon Broadbent of the seminal media research and planning work 'Spending Advertising Money'.

Jacobs is 'tremendously excited by the challenges ahead... The Millward Brown organisation has an enormous global database of advertising effect and media measures, and clients have other relevant data sets - my role will be to look at how we can measure media effect, and to marry the data from all sources so that clients are better able to manage their marketing and media budgets'.

According to Bob Meyers, Jacobs' expertise in this respect will help to answer 'the big unanswered question facing many clients today... how much return they are getting for the amount they're deploying against different media and different media buying patterns'. He concludes: 'We believe we are about to enter a new era in media research and we are delighted to have Brian on board to head up Millward Brown's efforts in this direction'.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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