AKQA

You know the drill... Each year, Adweek assigns a grade to advertising agencies of note. It's kind of like Bloomberg's grading system for the New York Public Schools. This year, the magazine cut their list from 10 agencies to just 8. They arrived at their final mark by considering several factors: "global revenue percentage gain (taking into account the size of the shop), revenue/staff ratio and how well a shop did at accelerating revenue growth faster than staff expansion." The shops were also graded on their management practices, creativity, strategy and their use of social networks, mobile and smart use of technology tools. Here's the final report card:

AKQA: B+

TRIBAL DDB: B-

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AKQA is now the AOR for The New York City Ballet (NYCB). The agency will be responsible for social media stuff, a website re-design and a new ticketing system. Let us hope that they listen to famous choreographer, George Balanchine: "In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell... we can't dance synonyms." In other words, because it's the multi-dimensional, beautiful, classic art form, doesn't mean it has to be complicated in an attempt to keep up with the times. Don't pull some over wrought Nike Women's stuff, yeah?

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They dun it — shirked the PC "happy holidays" line and went straight for the Christmas gold. Check out the video above, AKQA's holiday card thingamajig. Jingle Bells!

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The New York Times magazine gathered some industry professionals together to talk a little digital advertising. Included were: Benjamin Palmer, C.E.O. of the Barbarian Group.
Lars Bastholm, chief creative officer at AKQA and Robert Rasmussen, executive creative director of the Nike account at R/GA... Oh wait. The venerable paper seems to have missed Rasmussen's jump to BBH. Anyway, these three guys got together for a little bit of a digi-wank.

The web version is five pages comes with headings such as "Facebook Overalls" and "The Death Of The Massive Money Machine." A tad much, but clearly this one if for the laymen. In all honesty, these guys have some salient points. They address the things we all know about the internet, emerging media, etc. They are selling that digi business like their lives depend on it. Well, someone has to do it.

What's most interesting is that Bastholm mentions Nike a few times, a client of AKQA's and Rasmussen doesn't say a word despite having been the executive creative director on the Nike account at R/GA.

Bastholm also said: "Well, we do have a ton of different new media and new ways to use them. But before we get there, I would suggest that first, you take a step backward and ask yourself, How do I make my brand relevant?"

It's the same old question. Somethings in advertising never change.

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Oooh! AKQA's Halloween part looked like it was fun! See all the photos here. Belated posting, but still fun.

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AKQA has brought John F. Kennedy back to life in a spot that's nearly as creepy as Crispin's reanimation of Orville Redenbacher.

The shudder factor aside, the message is that we need change now if we're going to make the switch to renewable energy. In Greenpeace's words, the spot "challenges world leaders to tackle climate change by embracing renewable energy and setting efficiency standards."

JFK's Message:

"Will we look into the eyes of our children and confess that we had the opportunity but lacked the courage, that we had the technology but lacked the vision?"

Well, in the context of the actual speech during which JFK posed that question, no we won't. Why? Because we've already made it to the moon. And back. More than once.

For us this is a stretch (albeit a nice effort) on AKQA's part to turn JFK into a puppet for the sake of their client, Greenpeace. His mouth doesn't look right, his voice doesn't sound right, and it isn't right to twist a great man's words for even the most idealistic purposes (ed's note: Amsterdam based The Ambassadors procured the CGI effects). More on this, after the jump.

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continued...

As AKQA's latest strategy/planning hire, Bryan Fuhr is described by his peers as intensely smart, positive, and at times polarizing.

"People either love him or hate him," a former colleague remarked. "But (no one) is liked by everyone."

Fuhr started at AKQA in June of this year, where he bears the director of strategy title. He replaces Craig Walmsley, who married another AKQAer, Katie Harris (now Walmsley). After marrying, the pair moved back to AKQA London where they first met.

In his new role, Fuhr and other planners (Matt Oschner and Jessica Drapiza) are working to get their ideas right before going after the next big get. But his career is more than just a job — it's an altruistic attempt at clearing noise out of the digital space. It's also penance for a mistake he made six years ago.

More after the jump.

continued...

As we hoped, more information on the AKQA situation we reported yesterday has come to light.

We told you about a creative director at the agency who walked out when some of his team was let go. Well, the mystery addie is Jerome Austria.

He'll be setting his laptop up at Wieden + Kennedy NY as a CD. We just hope that with all that solidarity flowing, Austria didn't forget his Lion when he walked out of AKQA.

The move apparently had something to do with ECD Lars Bastholm, "who reportedly is horrible at managing people and does nothing but send cool web links and take credit for work he had no part of."

More after the jump...a lot more.

continued...

SpyWriter and I were chatting, and as you may recall, she's not so keen on posting layoffs these days. While I'm no happier to post them, the news still needs delivering. So with no further adieu,

"AKQA NYC Layoffs Yesterday. All seniors; Project Managers, Tech Managers, Creatives — 7 total. Upon hearing 1 of his sr art directors was walked out — Creative Director (responsible for a recent 2008 Cannes silver cyber lion) packed up his laptop and joined the others in solidarity. Move have quit; all the good creatives. Recent streak of losing 8 of 8 pitches the cause. AKQA NYC — done New Managing Director from DC running office now — dweeb"

That came in yesterday. Another AKQA tidbit came in today, marking more confirming the layoffs — on top of the aforementioned.

"akqa let go 5 or more people yesterday including project managers and lower level creatives"

By a rough count, that's more than 50 or so addies that have lost their jobs in the last week alone, from a number of different agencies. That might not sound like a lot, but add that to 30 here and 45 there from the last month or so and you've got a trend.

It's summer, financial plans are being reworked, and the economy sucks. Someone send us some good news, please. Oh, and in case you haven't heard what Tribble's reporting, check this out.

WE HEAR THAT... Da Frog is making a play into serious digital work. So far the agency has been keeping it pretty traditional, experiential, viral, and sometimes underground but with the recent edition of David Bryant from Digitas and once of DraftFCB, something had to pop off.

The water cooler is rife with rumors that StrawberryFrog has landed an account that is heavy on social media and digital capabilities. They apparently defeated agency of the year, AKQA, for this major client last week. What in the world...????

Can someone please cough up who the client it is? Merci.