#BostonSpotted: A Chat with mediaman USA


Mediaman USA in BostonGet to know mediaman USA and how they contribute to the hustle of the Hub.

Agency Spotter is all about helping marketers and agencies get to know each other. Discover how German heritage and American creativity makes mediaman an independent digital strategy agency delivering internationally cross-pollinated ideas.

Location: Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston
Core Service: Digital Strategy
Additional Services: Web, UX

Why did mediaman choose Boston for its first US office?mediaman fun with digital

We are based in Boston, but we are also working from Ohio, Montana and Maine. In the US we’ve been very lucky to have a team of new talents combined with mediaman team members who moved to the US. We organically developed a style of working remotely and this has helped us develop even greater fluency in our communication and work style with the other offices.

What’s unique about mediaman as a digital strategy agency?

For us, substance matters. We hold ourselves and our clients accountable for making the internet a better, more useful, place. We are a privately owned and operated international agency, which means that collaboration and cross pollination of ideas are everywhere. And, while we take pride in our German heritage, we make sure shake things up with a healthy dose of American creativity.

mediaman’s tagline is “expect more from digital.” Do you find businesses have low expectations for digital endeavors?

At the time that it was mediaman at SXSWcreated, our tagline was the result of a desire to capture the more holistic, strategic and creative work that many of our long time clients, such as Mercedes-Benz, Bosch and Zurich, were asking us to do. Projects that had begun with a very functional task, such as building a website, had become long term collaborative relationships.

Our digital strategy recommendations and content creation allowed our clients to move confidentially into new brand and technology-driven experiences. Digital can be complex and, more often than not, it is “downstream” in the overall strategy. We find we do our best work with clients who, like us, believe that digital is not just a point of execution but that it is a intimate conversation between the audience and the brand.

How do your clients benefit from in-house usability testing?

We do our best work when we, and the client, are working with information rather than assumptions. While not
every client decides to do usability testing, we find that the ones who do are often surprised by the findings and become as much an advocate of it as we are. At the heart of everything we create for our clients is the user and their experience. It is crucial to know your user’s true experience from their POV.

Can you give us an example of how mediaman’s “connected creativity” has grown a client’s online business?

Cmediaman's digital strategistsonnected creativity is so ingrained in our communication and process that sometimes we are not even aware of it. That is the case for our work with Merck KGaA, Merck Serono, and their US subsidiary, EMD Serono. The account team, which is composed of both US and German team members, is the point of contact for many website related tasks across the organization. This unique vantage point means that our creativity is not just in execution, but in seeing separate initiatives in the company and aligning them, or making content more consistent.

Who has better beer, Germany or the US?

We can’t tell you who has better beer, but as one of our German team members said, “we do know who plays better soccer.”

Great answer and thanks for chatting with us, mediaman!

Keep the Conversation Going

Check out mediaman’s portfolio on Agency Spotter to learn more and see how you’re connected. While you’re there,

  • If you’ve worked with them, give them a rating
  • If you like what you see, share their portfolio
  • If you’re interested in seeing how they could help you, contact them

For more Boston goodness, head over to Agency Spotter’s Boston Hub for more agency features, video interviews, and thought-provoking articles. Curious about what else Boston has to offer? Check it out.

Claire Wallace