Agencies

While we’re on the topic, might as well tell you that sources familiar with the matter confirm that Bryan Le has returned to his old stomping grounds at New York-based digital shop (or “trendy video game ad agency“) Rokkan. Le initially spent a year or so at Rokkan as a designer a few years back, but now, he’s moving up the ladder and rejoining the agency as creative director. Prior to his second tour of duty at said shop, Le spent the last two years at HUGE, where he last served as an art director.

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Well, guess Hyundai agency Innocean has finally found a replacement for Jeff Spiegel as the Huntington Beach, CA shop has announced that Greg Braun has now taken over as executive creative director. If you remember, Braun parted ways, we suppose, with Team Detroit’s Pulse unit, which he co-founded and where he served as president/ECD for three years. During his career, Braun spent two years as EVP/ECD at Y&R Detroit and six as GCD at Saatchi & Saatchi. Now at Innocean, Braun will be spearheading efforts for, yes, Hyundai Motor America. We’re not sure, though, if Braun can handle being a Chicago White Sox fan in Dodgers country.

If you don’t know the name Joe Burke, well now you know as the man who was a founding partner at Element 79 is now SVP/executive creative director of MARC USA’s Chicago office. The 20-year ad vet spent nine of those at Element 79 and ran the agency’s Gatorade business, taking the lead on spots for the brand such as “Michael Jordan vs. Mia Hamm.”

Prior to taking on the reins at Element 79, Burke spent 18 months as a creative director at DDB Chicago, where he worked on accounts such as Capital One. Anyhow, here was an internal memo sent to MARC staff this morning regarding Burke, who will take his post effective immediately.

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Pictured to your left is Grant Spanier, a young UX intern at the Minneapolis office of Digitaria (formerly known as JWT Minneapolis). While Grant has yet to do much of note since he got hired last Friday, the process that he went through to attain his new job is quite bizarre.

You see, the Twin Cities are home to terrible professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey teams. So, when watching old VHS tapes of The Mighty Ducks gets boring, Minnesotans have to get creative with the most mundane of tasks in order to stave off depression. That’s why for the past two years, the Minneapolis Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) has allowed local agencies to select interns by putting young marketing hopefuls through a process that looks a lot like “The Dating Game.” Agencies taking part in the 2012 edition of the InternGame were Digitaria, Periscope, Pixel Farm Digital, 3 Deep and The Nerdery.

After phone-screening a slew of interviewees, MIMA cuts the field down to 15, five categories of three competitors. Then, interested agencies grill interviewees with three questions to see who’s the best candidate for their internship openings. This year, Digitaria’s director of UX (and MIMIA VP) Jason Kleckner interviewed three potential interns, two on stage and one (Spanier) via Skype from a Starbucks in New York. So, what three answers for Kleckner won Spanier the internship? Read a transcript of Digitaria’s contribution to the InternGame after the jump.

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Well, it’s about time The Pitch took a turn for the interesting.

Next Sunday, Culver City-based Muse Communications will be the first diverse-segment ad agency to compete on AMC’s The Pitch. Now, if you’ve been following our weekly recaps of the show, you know that we’ve taken issue with a lot we’ve seen from both AMC and the agencies featured from week to week. But, one thing we haven’t mentioned much is how incredibly white each agency has been thus far, regardless of where in the country they’re located.

The above spot, “White Space” (not to be confused with DraftFCB Chicago’s new floor plan), will be debuting on Sunday during the broadcast of the episode featuring Muse pitching the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. As the agency’s chairman and CCO Jo Muse says in a statement, “The rate of hiring and retention of people of color has always been dismal in the advertising industry. It’s time the public felt the outrage of these people who, even now, can’t find a job in this business, much less move up to the executive ranks.”

It’s a great point, and one that unfortunately gets ignored more often than many would like to admit. Now, if only Muse could get people to actually watch The Pitch on a regular basis.

Just over a month after G2′s executive director, strategy Mike Dennelly left the agency (again) to take on a gig at a healthcare-focused shop called Evoke Interaction, his old colleague Geoff Council is following suit. Council has spent the last two years as executive creative director at G2 and five in total at the agency. Once again, it appears that the parting is amicable as the G2 camp tells us “it’s a great opportunity for [Council],” and that he’s “a great guy, well-liked and we’re going to miss him.” No word yet on what Council’s “opportunity” at Evoke is exactly, but we’ve been told his last day at G2 is next Friday.

Prior to G2, Council held creative posts at the likes of Euro RSCG and Draftfcb.

Before we dive into episode 5 of AMC’s The Pitch, I’d like to address two articles posted on Ad Age in the last week. The first, by PJA Advertising and Marketing’s CEO, Phil Johnson, seeks to address what he feels is the show’s biggest problem: That it portrays an outdated business model. Johnson argues that the show reduces the advertising industry to a caricature saying, “Senior people fret and worry, while junior teams do all the work. Worse yet, in some cases those junior teams get pitted against each other while those senior people condescendingly dismiss their ideas. Consistently, the client gets the least value from the most experienced and presumably expensive staff.”

Now, I don’t necessarily think that this is a problem with The Pitch. This is a problem with the industry as a whole, and no matter how many agency CEOs mug in front of the camera and talk about how their company’s processes are “different,” you’ll find that their employees say something quite the opposite. Scan our comment section sometime for validation.  Instead, I would argue that The Pitch‘s biggest problem is that it’s mind-numbingly boring for anyone outside of the industry. As my girlfriend said during last night’s episode, “I love reality shows where two teams compete. I mean, I’ll watch and enjoy Storage Wars. But, I can’t watch this.”

The second big problem, of course, is that no one is actually watching The Pitch. Ad Age ran the numbers, and found that a mere 148,000 people in the all-important 18-49 demo watched the show last week. However, due to AMC’s slim amount of original programming, the show will most likely complete its entire eight-episode season instead of getting pulled from the air early. I guess they figure re-running Breaking Bad season four isn’t going to top a regular viewership the size of Joliet, Illinois. So, how is AMC hoping to attract viewers, aside from moving the show’s timeslot so that new episodes air right after Mad Men? Well, why not bring back The Ad Store, the losing agency from just three episodes ago? (Like always, spoilers ahead!)

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BDDO San Francisco’s Dan Hofstadter and Ricardo Valero are on the move as the creative team has left said agency after less than a year to take on similar ACD roles at fellow Bay Area operation, EVB. During their brief stint at BBDO SF, copywriter Hofstadter (pictured) and art director Valero, who joined last summer from Goodby and DDB Milan, respectively,  worked together on accounts including Mars’ Cesar and Whiskas brands, Gallo wine and Harrah’s.

Now at the Evolution Bureau, the pair will work directly under ECD Stephen Goldblatt and with a shop that counts clients including Facebook, Firefox and various Mars/Wrigley brands such as Skittles, Altoids, Juicy Fruit and Orbit. Along with his ACD stint at Goodby, Hofstadter spent three years in Chicago as a creative at Leo Burnett while Valero worked in his native Spain at Euro RSCG Madrid as well as Y&R Milan before heading to the States.

And in as the world turns news, a week after we reported that Marty Cooke left the agency now known as RAPP, word come through that husband/wife team Wayne and Kim Pick were named executive creative directors of its New York office.The Picks have transferred from RAPP’s New Zealand branch, which handled accounts such as Adidas, VW, Häagen Dazs, Hewlett-Packard, Olay, McDonald’s and Nike, among others.

 

“Circulo Creativo Latino de Estados Unidos” is an organization that seeks to increase and foster interaction between US-based Hispanic creatives. This year, the CCLEU held a competition that asked young creatives to create a PSA of sorts encouraging eligible members to join the organization, with the winning entry earning its creators an all-expenses paid trip to the Cannes Lions Festival.

The winning entry (above) comes from art director Said Fayad and copywriter Marc Duran, two employees at Wing, a WPP-owned subsidiary of Grey that specializes in work that targets a Latino audience. “We’re Better Together” is a phrase contrasted with probably the worse piece of three-word advice any movie character can take, the infamous “let’s split up.” Maybe best made fun of in Joss Whedon‘s recent horror/satire Cabin in the Woods, “let’s split up” never works out for the would-be victims of film.

Sure, one could argue that Fayad’s and Duran’s spot’s effectiveness relies on borrowed interest from the various films and TV shows it features. But, for pop-culture and horror movie buffs (I’m looking at you, Kiran), identifying where each clip originates is what makes “We’re Better Together” so much fun.