We got a rumour over the weekend about copywriter Eric Kallman and art director Craig Allen, a pair of TBWA/Chiat/Day, N.Y. creatives who were responsible for a lot of the Skittles work there under ECD Gerry Graf — well they were resigning and shuffling off to a new locale.

Since you kids all love the journalistic integrity SuperSpy & I try and put through here — I wrote Jeremy Miller — TBWA PR guy — this morning to try and confirm that it was the case.

Dick writes back (at 3:39 pm EDT):

“Already posted on Creativity online.”  (This is the contents of the entire e-mail)

Uh… thanks dickweed for your help & assistance.  Since we got scooped because of a wanker at TBWA — here is the link to the article.  They are off to W+K Portland and will be working on the Old Spice and Careerbuilder accounts under CD Mark Fitzloff, but also eventually hope to expand their repertoire on Nike and Coca-Cola.

Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam has appointed Lee Newman, previously senior vice-president and group account director at Austin-based GSD&M, as managing director.

Newman will join executive creative directors John Norman and the recently appointed Jeff Kling to complete the management team at W&K Amsterdam.

At SuperSpy’s fave agency, Newman led the agency’s BMW account, helping BMW “evolve their brand positioning” (ed note: don’t you love the extra fancy terminology?) in the US market. Prior to GSD&M, Newman was senior vice-president and group account director at McKinney-Silver on the Audi of America account.

Newman also oversaw the BMW account at Fallon before joining GSD&M, and was part of the team that developed the BMW Films campaign.

So it seems they have appointed a “car guy” in a location where they don’t have a car account (They run the Honda account out of their London office) — interesting tack to take going forward. They run the Carlsberg, Coke, EA, Nike, Sharp AQUOS & Wyborowa Wodka accounts (amongst a couple of others) with 150 people in the Amsterdam office.

Even more UK news…and fast food-related too!

Four agencies have been shortlisted for Pizza Hut’s £13 million (apprximately $26+ million USD) ad account to market their shitty-tasting pizza to the masses in the UK.

The restaurant chain announced today that it had shortlisted Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y&R, Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy and M&C Saatchi.

The news comes a month after Weiden & Kennedy resigned the account after holding it for three years.

It is believed the agency was frustrated by the creative potential after a 50 per cent stake in the business was sold by Whitbread to US parent Yum! Foods.

W&K won the Pizza Hut business from Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO in February 2005.

On April 4, we forgot to say Happy 10th to Wieden And Kennedy London!

Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai has just moved into. We agree with the Welcome To Optimism blog. It looks very cool.[source]

W+K hired Jason Clement as their director of search. Seems like Jason might have his work cut out for him beginning with the agency’s own website. Tribble, the blog devoted to advertising agencies and their SEM/SEO capabilities (or lack there of) has taken a closer look at the Wieden website. Ah, the digital era is just to fabulous, no?

“The site fails to rank for it’s industry terms such as Advertising Agency or Ad Agency . It appears that W+K is spamming as well, with misspellings to boot.”

Get a look at their source code and read further analysis here.

Wieden + Kennedy is getting into the game of search in um, err, a creative way? Apparently, the agency is looking to bring search into the creative process. Only at W+K, kids. Only at W+K. The agency has hired its first director of search, Jason Clement, who was a Partner, Director at Neo/Ogilvy, as well as Associate Director SEM at Carat Fusion.

“We’re getting invested in this because we think creativity in search is an area that hasn’t been exploited at all,” said Renny Gleeson, global director of digital strategies told Adweek. “It’s a sad reflection of people’s inability to get over the fact that it has long since graduated from being a DR tool.”

Swear. The kids at Wieden can’t help, but climb up on that intellectual soap box every chance they get. Yes, you guys are the geeks who made good, blah, blah, blah. So, what is this “creative strategy” the agency plans on applying to search?

“Gleeson sees search being used not just to translate ideas into keyword lists and tagging, but also to come up with creative strategies. For instance, search trends give clues to customer behavior that can be mined for strategic insights.”

OMG! Shut up! Noooo way! Search gives clues to consumer behavior? Shut the fuck up. Shut up. No, seriously… like, I don’t believe you. Adweek goes on to talk about some other tactics in the business that any proper search company has been pushing for ages, such as search for TV and mobile and cross media searches. However, W+K isn’t trying to compete with SEM firms. Instead, it sounds like this is a bonus package for existing clients. An add-on if you will. It’s also a way to extend Wieden’s practices now that digital is a key discipline for all agencies. Nice PR move, W+K. Hell, you kids are pretty smart, ain’t ya?

Seems that W+K London — on an ever-expanding burst of business — is moving offices yet again.

Instead of packing every bit of all their stuff and moving it — they decided to hold a garage sale of non-essential items and donate the proceeds to charity– selling random bits of collected SWAG (because everyone should have a chance to sample that liquor you’ve been hiding behind your computer monitor and you’ve only ever cracked open when it is 3 am and that last bit of creative just made it out the door to the client.)

Read more below:

http://wklondon.typepad.com/welcome_to_optimism/2008/03/the-inaugural-w.html

Feh Tarty who has just returned from blogging the Andy’s judging process has changed teams according to the W+K blog. Bye to Goodby, hello to WK London. Okay, now look down below this posting. Yes, not to far. Right there. See that there? That’s a posting about Mark Wenneker leaving Goodby for Mullen.

Now, if we can just get one more body to bail today, it’ll be a sign that all is balanced in the advertising eco-system. Oh wait. We didn’t fully read the subversive print, as we were blinded by the news about sweet faced Tarty. Pat is also sayanora. When we say Pat, we mean Pat McKay.

Well, that’s that then. The prophecy has been fulfilled and all is well in advertising (for some people).

In September, W+K announced they were setting up shop in India. Here’s some snaps of their new outlet in Delhi from one of the many Wieden blogs. The young lady in the first shot is Nusrat Madraswala. We just love the last shot. There’s something about that rocking horse…