As part of our Favorite Brand Experience series, we’re pleased to bring you an interview with Alex Brunori, Executive Creative Director at MRM Worldwide, Italy. MRM recently worked with Eyeblaster and MSN to launch the first Sidekick format in Italy for Samsung.

Your idea about the perfect working day:

You get in the agency at 11:30am and open an email from a pitched client that informs you that they are more than happy to choose yours as their agency of records and that, to testify their esteem, they have decided to double the account too. Then you have some presentation meetings with the creative teams that come up with ideas so clever that, once executed, will result in pure gold in all the pivotal global advertising awards. Lunch break with the agency’s top client that says they are so satisfied by the utmost care you put in working on their brands that they want the agency to work for them globally with a lifelong contract. After lunch, a couple of hours of very interesting and educated discussions with the colleagues about art, philosophy, politics, music and religion and, finally, you leave the office at 5pm for a(nother) glorious and glamourous social evening/night.


Then you wake up from the weird dream you were having, generated by continuous sleep deprivation, and start the REAL working day.

Your muse best comes when:

In our industry you have to be “creative” round the clock, and you really cannot wait for the muse to come… Actually it’s more like chasing her round the office all of the time, kicking her butt whenever she stops. Having said that, extremes always work: late nights / very early mornings, or solitude moments / crowded team meetings.

How did you start working in digital advertising?

Me and technology, it’s a love story since I was a child. I have been doing R&D, experimenting with the endless creative possibilities, as soon as the digital age started dawning on advertising. Before MRM, when I was in JWT (and that agency didn’t even have a digital unit), I came up with a web-based, cross-channel campaign for Kraft that won many awards in Italy and abroad. That was a turning point, but the road was taken long before that.

What was the initial Client Brief for the Nuovo Samsung Omnia II Campaign?

The client asked for something of great impact that could stand above the usual display adv formats. They needed to mark the uniqueness of Samsung Omnia II in the smartphones market, and they wanted to do so by emphasizing the significant number of technological features of their product.

What made you decide to use the Sidekick Format by Eyeblaster?

We were proposed the use of the Sidekick Format by MSN Italy, and we got immediately excited about this opportunity. The format was just what we needed to develop a creativity that could really stand out and have an impact. Also, this format is great when the need is to send a complex, multi-faceted message: we were able to show the major features of the product, and embed the 30″ TV Spot, but we felt like we didn’t stretch its capabilities to the limit nevertheless. In addition, it is the first time this format has been developed for MSN homepage (in Italy), and we feel just a bit honored by this.

What was the client’s feedback/reaction to the ad?

Nothing less than excited.