Like us on Facebook

See the current issue
of The Internationalist magazine

Find out how to sponsor an issue of Trendsetters

LONDON’s Michael Moszynski Tells How New Wordeo Video Message App Brings Words to Life

Michael Moszynski believes in being brilliant. Named an Internationalist Agency Innovator in 2009 for founding LONDON, an international advertising agency with a single UK office that proves how brilliant ideas that can work anywhere in the world, he also serves as Chairman of the new start up, Wordeo, which launched globally last month.

Wordeo (pronounced “word-eee-o”) is the result of a confluence of industry trends of which Michael Moszynski is keenly aware. Agencies today need to attract the best digital talent. Increasingly, they must find cutting-edge solutions and even create new vehicles to stay at the top of their game. Cisco’s prediction that video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic by 2017-- (just 3 years from now)—already has marketers thinking about video’s influence on the future of content marketing. Finally, who can deny a new social love affair with images and speed given the fast acceptance of Vine, Viddy, Instagram and Snapchat? Of course, this also means that simple text messages are becoming “so last century.”

A genius for timing, Michael announced an innovative digital agency competition that was embraced by The Times of London, as they introduced a new business section devoted to smaller companies and startups, as well as by Prime Minister David Cameron just as the British government was incentivizing investment into entrepreneurial businesses and digital talent. LONDON offered £100,000 of funding, office space, mentoring and confirmed pitches for leading brands including Samsung, Warner Bros. and 10 others.

Wordeo, the idea that won the competition, has since attracted a significant seven figure sum of additional funding and built a team of 16, based in Tech City, including CTO Bob Johnson, who was instrumental in launching iPlayer, the BBC’s streaming TV and radio platform. Wordeo, in a first tech review, has already been described as “turning plain text into audiovisual poetry.”

Amazingly, Wordeo also has secured an exclusive deal with Getty Images for access to its stock video library, which gives users hundreds of thousands of images to illustrate their messages, in addition to their own footage.

So how does it work? Wordeo is best understood when experienced as its impact is immediate. Nonetheless, creating a Wordeo is easy. A user just clicks the app’s compose button and types in a text message. Wordeo immediately selects music and video clips to illustrate key words in the message. A preview is created, which can be sent or further customized with other Getty clip choices or by adding your own content. Once you are happy, you can immediately share it on social media, email and SMS.

To get the idea, here’s a video that Michael created in less than a minute when we met for breakfast in London. CLICK HERE:

What are the implications for marketing?

Without question, Wordeo adds emotion to messages by connecting images and words. The app also makes messages more memorable. Michael Moszynski anticipates significant implications for brands, particularly in their communications through Twitter and Facebook.

Already Wordeo is being embraced to transform a number of markets from dating to recruitment. A great example is from an American student in Kentucky who applied for a job 4,000 miles away at Michael's ad agency, LONDON. Michael asked him to submit his application in a Wordeo which he did:
http://wordeo.com/w/0b0547c5074b4ef5b5d253c278301177

Needless to say Michael offered him a position on the spot and Patrick Aaron started work on March 3rd. His task? To create Wordeos to target potential new clients, of course.

Michael Moszynski’s career is the stuff of legend. After started at Lever Brothers, he joined Saatchi & Saatchi London where he became the company's youngest-ever Board Director managing a range of global clients such as HP, Courvoisier and J&J. His career took off, though, when he ran the British Airways account internationally.

He then launched M&C Saatchi in both Asia and the Middle East, and during Hong Kong’s ex-pat boom years leading up to The Handover, his Hong Kong base was a houseboat in Victoria Harbour when Kai Tak airport was nothing more than a treacherous landing strip in Kowloon Bay, wedged between apartment blocks and mountains.

In 2008, he and founding partner Alan Jarvie (former Creative Director of M&C Saatchi) launched LONDON, “an international advertising agency built for today.” LONDON has proven to deliver a high return on investment by creating “One Brilliant Idea” that can work in any media, anywhere in the world. Michael is now also Chairman of Wordeo.