thinking outside the box is preached more often than it's practiced. At groupm, oleg marries data and creativity to optimize performance.

Oleg Frasineanu has a dream. A dream that one day, a great marketing idea will be judged not by the job title held by the person presenting it, but by the content of the data backing up the idea.

For too long, many marketing agencies have kept their data teams separate from the creative department. But Oleg’s vision is to remove that gap by encouraging those who gather, wash and analyze campaign and project data to take more ownership of their ability to generate genuine creative ideas.

“Thinking outside the box should start with the data team. They often have amazing skills and great potential that needs to be unlocked. Maybe they don't know how creative they can be. Creativity is just as important as data – they complement each other perfectly,” he says.

Over his many years in the marketing industry, Oleg’s best results always came from thinking outside the box. As part of GroupM Nexus, Oleg’s digital biddable team is continually finding ways to better connect the data and creative teams. This synergy unlocks highly creative and powerful ideas which is a remarkably successful formula that has made GroupM number one in performance marketing.

“If GroupM is like the body of a Ferrari, Nexus is the engine. Every time we take the engine out for a spin on a client project, we are fine-tuning it to get better and better at what we do,” Oleg says.

This requires attracting the best people from across the industry and creating a community where their bright minds can share ideas and experience.

He says talented people are knocking on GroupM’s door not just because it is an inclusive company where people are treated well by exemplary leadership. They are also drawn to the out-of-the-box thinking encouraged by Oleg and his team.

“It’s wonderfully freeing to operate within a culture that encourages an attitude of ‘work hard, play hard,’ but also ‘dream hard.’ All of that tends to generate a lot of creative spark.”