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“Who’s responsible for emerging media on the client side? Who’s responsible for emerging media on the agency side? No one,” he says. “I think there are media agencies that recognise emerging media is an issue and are looking into it. But I’m not entirely convinced they’re best placed to hold the argument or have the debate, because they tend not to be able to turn it into anything. They can observe a trend but can they turn that trend into an end product for a client?”

Duncan argues that because MRM’s key focus is on creating and understanding interactive experiences from a consumer’s perspective, it can identify the opportunities offered by emerging media better than a media agency could.

“A media agency’s job is more about getting people aware of a brand or service. We’re more about creating and managing the engagement or experience between the brand and consumer,” he says. He does admit, however, that MRM needs to work closely with media agencies, particularly sister agency McCann, in order to achieve that.

Specific details about the Hollywood lab are being kept under wraps, but Duncan, who will be there at the launch, says the aim is to provide an environment for brands to experiment with new media and test new ideas with consumers.

“Some brands are really savvy and already on top of new media, but others don’t even know where to begin and whether mobile or iTV would be relevant to them. We aim to help them find out through the lab,” he says.

While it’s too early to say whether MRM will launch a lab in the UK or any of its other markets, Duncan already has several people on the UK team who are purely responsible for emerging media. He says the agency is working on several such projects for clients, including an iTV trial for a major FMCG client and an experiential broadband project for another. “For FMCG firms, the key challenge is working out whether there’s a relevant interactive strategy for, say, a saccharin brand,” he says.

Duncan argues that, ultimately, TV is still the best channel for consumer goods brands to raise awareness. “If you want to raise awareness or communicate a message about something, then there’s no better way of doing it in the UK market than a TV commercial,” he says. “But if you want to build a dialogue with the consumer, then TV isn’t necessarily the best way of doing it. I like to think of a TV commercial as the film trailer and digital marketing as the actual film, the experience, which is what we create.”

The key thing is making sure that the brand experience, from TV trailer through to online game or mobile campaign, is fully integrated from a consumer’s point of view. Duncan knows a thing or two about integration, having spent the past nine months merging Zentropy, the digital agency he set up five years ago, with sister agencies MRM, contract publisher Just Communications and database analytics company Millar Starr, to create MRM Partners.

“I read some research by one of the big investment banks that said that 80% of mergers fail to add shareholder value,” he says. “I have experienced agency mergers in the past and often the end product is indeed less than the sum of the separate parts. We’ve really tried to avoid that here. I’m a great believer in the phrase ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, so we’ve only changed things where we really needed to, where it would benefit our clients.”

Duncan admits the process hasn’t been without its challenges, particularly getting people to talk to one another, and merging several totally different agency cultures into one common culture. One advantage is that because they were sister agencies previously, a number of people had already worked together on client projects, making the process of integration easier.

The key focus now is making sure that the internal integration provides real benefits externally to the agency’s client base, which includes Microsoft, Nestlé, Unilever, Royal Bank of Scotland and Johnson & Johnson. Duncan believes it’s already providing value for one of the agency’s biggest clients, Microsoft.

“It used a number of our services before, but having them all together in one place allows us to provide a much better, fully integrated service,” he says. “That’s not to say every client is going to want everything that we do, but we’re starting to see more circumstances where clients are saying, ‘Can you do this for me as well?’”

Areas in which MRM is particularly seeing increased demand from clients are branded content and, with the growth in broadband penetration, film production for the online environment. “We’re seeing an increasing desire for branded content from clients. Brands are thinking about how they can talk about themselves in a way that consumers are all right with. It’s another whole opportunity for us to explore.”

This links nicely with the focus on emerging media. Duncan points out the fact that most emerging platforms are initially adopted through some kind of entertainment - for example, Sky and sports. He believes that advertisers can learn a lot from the entertainment industry.

“The biggest challenge for every brand is to build an emotional connection with their audience, which programmers and media properties are very good at,” he says. “Advertisers can both associate themselves with these success stories and learn from them.”