-13-year Razorfish vet Valerie Carlson has joined SapientNitro as executive creative director for its Los Angeles office.

-Minneapolis ad vet Dorion Taylor, who has spent time at Campbell Mithun, Martin|Williams and most recently served as marketing ops manager at Target, has joined Twin Cities agency Carmichael Lynch as director of new business.

-WPP-owned brand strategy/design consultancy The Brand Union has unveiled new designs for Absolut’s line of vodkas (above).

-NYC-based creative studio Goodpenny has added editors John Marinis and Sven Herrmann to its roster. link

-Toronto-based agency Blammo has made a handful of hires including account director Nicole Brown and creatives Mike Richardson, formerly of Draftfcb, CP+B/Draftfcb alum Oliver Brooks as well as Vanessa Heber and Victoria Sturgess.

-Milwaukee-based, Omnicom/DAS-owned agency GMR Marketing has appointed Steve Dupee as EVP/business development.

-Some parents are taking issue with a recent JCPenney spot, which the retail chain says is no longer part of its current TV campaign. link

The future of TV is evidently here, and a new series of spots from 72andSunny for Samsung portray the typical American family coming to terms with the fact that they will forever be enslaved to the glowing rectangle in their living room, especially considering that it now hooks up to the Internet.

Yes, Samsung’s smart TV comes with a remote that turns the set on when you hold it up to your mouth like a microphone and say “Hi, TV.” Useless? Maybe, until you consider that crippling loneliness that most of us endure. It’s nice to be able to talk to someone sometimes, you know? Even if it is just a TV. A nice, friendly TV who you can tell your problems to and routinely greet.

Samsung is also offering an “Evolution Kit,” which you can stick on the back of your grandfather’s TV. Of course, being a total grandpa, gramps will inevitably turn the conversation into one about his hip. Silly grandpa! Always talking about his fake hip. What a total grandpa move. One more spot, which features the grandpa and the dad watching Star Trek, and credits follow after the jump.

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After spending the last four years serving as group creative director/managing partner at IPG-owned, NYC-based agency Gotham, Reid Miller has headed to WPP-owned TAXI to assume the role of ECD at its New York office. During his time at Gotham, Miller worked alongside fellow GCD/managing partner Anthony Moss on past and present accounts including Denny’s (“Always Open,” for example), Yellowbook, Hitachi and Best Western. Prior to Gotham, Miller, an art director by trade, served as an ACD or creative director at the likes of Y&R, BBDO, Lowe and Hill Holliday. The parties involved say Miller’s appointment “completes the management lineup” at TAXI NYC, which counts clients including Mohegan Sun and Campbell’s Soup.

Miller succeeds Stephen Leps, who spent the last two-plus years as TAXI NY ECD. We’ve been told has chosen to stay close to the creative product as GCD, “building on existing client relationships and supporting Reid on a day-to-day basis.”

Well, this agency’s certainly keeping us busy today. We’ve received confirmation that Ewan Paterson, who’s spent over three years as chief creative officer at DDB Chicago, is leaving the agency. Paterson joined DDB Chicago in 2010 from CHI & Partners in London, where he served as executive creative director for five years. Regarding his reasons for leaving, the DDB Chicago camp says, “He will be moving back to London with his family. Ewan intends to take some time off and will remain available to us for the next several months as we make a transition to new creative leadership in Chicago.”

Paterson is no stranger to the DDB fold as he spent a decade in the agency network’s London office working with brands including VW and Sony. During his career, the creative exec also worked at BBH London, where he led campaigns for British Airways, Unilever and Vodafone.

As for his time at DDB and future plans, Paterson himself says, “Its been a fantastic three and half years and I’m proud of the agency’s transformation from the where it was in 2010. With six Cannes Lions over the last twelve months it’s evident that agency is becoming  stronger and more diversified creatively. I’ll miss the people who make up DDB Chicago hugely, but the stars have aligned for me and the my family to go home to London.  I intend to spend three to four months being a ‘dad’ for the first time-ever and then working on setting up my own agency.”

No official word from the Deutsch LA camp as of yet, but a phone call to the agency tells us that Victoria Guenier is no longer at the IPG-owned operation where she’s spent nearly a decade. For the last four years, Guenier served as SVP/director of broadcast/content production at Deutsch LA, which last December helped fund her feature film effort, Between Us, via the agency’s Side Project Project initiative. As for her day job, Guenier worked on several campaigns for the likes of Volkswagen (including this), Playstation, Dr. Pepper and Taco Bell (including this). No word yet on reasons for her departure, but those on the Spy line allege that VW budget issues may have had something to do with it.

Prior to her lengthy stint at Deutsch LA, Guenier spent a few years on the production side at Ogilvy.

In 2012, a creative director fell into Herman Melville’s 720-page trap and reimagined Ahab as a tow truck driver, madly chasing his white whale, an Audi Quattro. “Sometimes, I actually think it’s mocking me,” Ahab says in a gruff voice, anxiously twisting his thermos as he waits in the arctic tundra.

Said creative director then got distracted by Cetology, but has now resurfaced to produce “Ahab Redux,” in which, obviously, our automotive whale has yet to meet his driver. Ahab has retired on an island “most folks would call paradise,” but he can’t escape his all-wheel drive demon. “There isn’t a road on earth that can stop it.”

Thankfully this ad is a departure from the old winding-mountain-road glamour reel, and I appreciate the attempt at literary allusion. We’re all familiar with Moby Dick, whether we became obsessed like Ahab or SparkNoted its entirety. “Ahab Redux” is a bit of a cop-out due to its repetition, but the general idea probably gives Audi’s target affluent audience a twinge of self-satisfaction: “Oh, I know that story!”

Credits and original Ahab after the jump Read more

We checked with Kevin Drew Davis himself last week on what his next gig would be after leaving DigitasLBi earlier this month, but didn’t get the full story. Well, now we know as it’s hit the newswires and trades up north that KDD has assumed the newly created position of chief creative officer at DDB Canada. So why the move, Kevin? “DDB Canada has been on my radar for some time,” he says in a statement, adding, “From the senior executive team to its creative leaders, everyone I’ve met has demonstrated an unwavering passion for their work. DDB’s culture is balanced with a tremendous amount of humility and integrity, which is a rare combination. For me, it’s all about the people that surround you.”

As noted, this is the first time a chief creative officer has been appointed to lead all of DDB Canada’s integrated creative departments, which span Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver. Davis will be based in the agency’s Toronto office. In case you forgot, Davis spent two years as ECD for both Digitas San Francisco and Chicago prior to joining DDB Canada and spent several years as global interactive CD at W+K among other notable stints.

-After spending the last two-and-a-half years as director/social media at R/GA, Ryan McLaughlin has headed to Tribal Worldwide to assume the new role of chief strategy officer. McLaughlin will be based in Tribal’s New York office.

-Sir Martin Sorrell has joined LinkedIn today as an influencer and has penned his first post, which includes his thoughts on the “Washington Kindle.” link

-If you have a few minutes to spare, here’s Team One’s final trailer for 2K’s The Bureau: XCOM Declassified dubbed “The Aftermath” (above).

-Interbrand’s Johannesburg hub, Interbrand Sampson de Villiers, has appointed Sarah Lent as managing director.

-In an effort to “streamline the process of producing interactive digital projects,” the AICP folks have released their “Digital Statement of Work.” link (.pdf)

-Gary Schechner has joined Publicis Groupe-owned Rosetta as partner/head of marketing and will be based in the agency’s Los Angeles office.

Cool news out of Honda camp: The American branch of the Japanese automaker is attempting to revive the dying drive-in theater industry with Project Drive-In, an awareness campaign that will provide five drive-in theaters with new digital projectors. Currently, about half of the 368 drive-ins still operating in America may be forced to close in the next few years unless they switch to digital projects to support the technology used for most new releases. New digital projectors cost between $75k-$100k, which as you may be able to guess, isn’t chump change for theaters that mostly exist in Middle America.

Honda, teaming with its longtime ally RPA, launched the super-duper social flood on the usual networks and has anchored it all to projectdrivein.com for users who want to donate, spread the word, vote on theaters to save, etc. And even if the good press will ultimately fail to save the obsolete drive-in theater industry, kudos to Honda for jumping in with both feet anyway.

With the upcoming launch of Fox Sports’ potential ESPN rival Fox Sports 1 on August 17, the brand has chosen Pereira & O’Dell New York as lead creative agency for its 24-hour sports network. This move expands a relationship that began in the spring as P&O’D had already been working on a project basis on 1-2 assignments for Fox Sports 1. In a statement, Fox Sports EVP/head of marketing Robert Gottlieb says, “We’ve never brought in an outside creative agency on a continuous basis as we have significant in-house capabilities. With Pereira & O’Dell  we have found a great partner who  can operate as a creative think-tank as we enter the market with Fox Sports 1. We’re thrilled with their  initial work and look forward to what’s    coming down the pipeline.”

What’s coming down the pipeline includes not only work for upcoming Fox Sports 1 shows like Fox Sports Live, Fox Football Daily and Crowd Goes Wild but a big campaign supporting Super Bowl XLVIII, which will take place in New York. While Pereira & O’Dell gets down to work, its newest client is still trying to iron out deals with Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Dish.