Euro RSCG Names Cabaco N. American CCO

Since you all love your creative announcements (and critiques abound) — we have another one for you.

Jose Cabaco, a creative director at Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore., has been hired by Euro RSCG Worldwide here as its first chief creative officer for North American operations.

More details from Adweek:

“Jose is that rare creative talent who combines excellence in both strategy and creative, in both creative concept and execution, in both inspiring and authoring, and in driving both creative vision and creative operations,” said Esther Lee, CEO, North America and president of global brands, in a statement.

At Wieden, Cabaco, 43, oversaw creative strategy for Nike Europe, Nike Latin America and Electronic Arts. Cabaco, who also worked at Wieden in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, spent much of his career in Portugal.

Born in Maputo, Mozambique, Cabaco studied industrial design at the Institute of Art & Design in Lisbon and went on to work at agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi, Cineponto/Leo Burnett Lisbon, Vitruvio Leo Burnett Madrid, Young & Rubicam, Nova Publicidade and EPG/TBWA in Lisbon. He co-founded his own agency in Lisbon in 2001 called Home, which later merged with Grey Advertising.

Prior to advertising, Cabaco worked as a car, furniture and ceramics designer. He also co-founded Bike magazine and was a creative partner at Sneakers Delight stores in Portugal.”

Working at Nike pays off again for those fleeing the rain of Portland — videogame experience too at EA (the hottest industry at the moment) can’t hurt either.

I’m sure you’ll have input to add…

Jimmy Kimmel…brought to you by Vitameatavegamin.

According to Adweek, Jimmy Kimmel Live will make live ads available to advertisers around mid-May. Late-night TV hasn’t seen live ads since the days of Johnny Carson. Their general disappearance from TV for so many years (with the exception of The Price is Right) basically will give advertisers a retro means of standing out again. Viewers under 30 haven’t even really seen live ads before… unless you count old TV re-runs on Nick at Nite. Actually… scratch that. Nick at Nite is considering shows from the late 80s to be “oldies” now.

Quoted from the article:

“We’re thrilled to be offering it,” said Hochstadt. “It just gives us one more way that our customers can touch the product.”

Ad buyers are intrigued by the Kimmel plan. “I think it’s a great idea,” said David Barrington, evp, managing director of video investments, at Havas’ MPG. ” The brand has to fit first and foremost and I’m sure it’s not for everyone. But at the end of the day to have someone who is a great talent like that make the ad a part of the content will help get our messaging across and also help break through the clutter.

You know. Breaking through the clutter… like this…

And they say there are no new ideas anymore…psha.

Charging out the gate with a indifferent whimper…

AdAge has an interesting article on the languishing prospects of trying to build out “Project DaVinci” — the 1,000 person shop WPP is supposed to be building to support the recently won $4.5 billion Dell account.

Seems not having a CEO for the shop or the account is making talented people not want to sign on (ed note: you don’t say.) Mitch Caplan, interim CEO, pulled the chute effective last month and went back to his regular gig of being CMO for Y&R.

The deadline was March 1st and still no definitive plan for getting the thing up & running — or an actual real name either — and no idea when either are forthcoming.

Sure they have attracted a few senior people (here is the low-down on the string of mentions they have gotten over the past few months); have about 500 lower-level staffers in place to do the grunt work; their own dedicated e-mail address to get resumes spammed to; and a brand-new shiny office in Austin.

That being said, when the aliens land in Austin and say “Take me to your leader” — well they are not so much ready for that one (in Texas, an “alien” is considered to be anyone not born & bred in Texas…or those with an IQ over 85 *snark for the win!*)

More from Ad Age:

“Other questions yet to be answered include the location of international hubs (rumored are London and Singapore), the full-spectrum of agencies that DaVinci will contract with to service Dell’s account, and when and if other clients will be serviced by the shop. This last one is particularly important. While Dell has said the WPP agency will be allowed to handle other clients, it’s unclear how long it will need to absorb the Dell responsibilities, something it will have to do before it pursues new business. A broader client base will be vital in retaining talent since one of the benefits of a job at an agency is the freedom to work on a variety of client businesses.

Given the many uncertainties, many in the industry may perceive decamping for an agency that has a lot of kinks to iron out as “a risky move in a bad economy,” noted Ms. Ries. “There are certainly people looking for jobs,” but for those who already have them, the opportunity to work at DaVinci could be a tougher sell. “They’ll be congratulated if it does work and blamed if it doesn’t — that’s terribly fearful for people,” she said.

No shortage of applicants
To be sure, the allure of a startup where one can be at the forefront of an agency-model reinvention has drawn interest. WPP insiders report a flood of resumes to DaVinci’s attention, and hundreds of hires that have been made to the agency from within the WPP and beyond.

Another former WPP executive expected to join DaVinci’s leadership team is Jeffrey Wilks, who most recently served as president, IBM Brand Services at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. Down in Austin, Texas, near Dell’s Round Rock headquarters, a handful from Omnicom Group’s GSD&M Idea City have joined, executives familiar with the matter say. WPP’s MediaCom, a Group M unit assigned to lead media strategy for Dell has hired about 50 people in the U.S. to work on the Dell account — “a lot to do in a short amount of time,” one MediaCom executive said.”

Given the past track record for WPP’s “achievements” in this category recently — i.e. Microsoft (which is one of the accounts that helped formulate the conglomeration of “Y&R Brands” — and which WPP currently shares with IPG’s McCann Worldgroup) I’d not bet the farm they pull it off all that well.

Rumors of the turnover (aka bloodbath) that the MSFT account has become for Y&R over the past three years — the 1000 people that they need to hire — well they’ll probably need to have 3-4000 in reserve to replace them as people realize how much it will suck.

What are your thoughts?

Take me down to the “Foam City” where the grass is greener…

After months of online chatter, Fallon London’s Sony Foam City ad has been released, pushing the latest Handycam and Cybershot ranges.

The campaign sees downtown Miami flooded with 460 million litres of foam by a machine that generates over 2 million litres of foam every minute.

The ad broke today in Europe, but will not appear on UK TV screens until 1 May.

In the ad over 200 residents from Miami are invited to enter “Foam City” armed with the cameras from the range to capture reactions.

The spot is directed by Simon Ratigan at HLA and uses 3 cameras running 80,000 feet of film.

It features music composed by Warren Ellis, from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

All the images taken on the shoot will be uploaded to an online database and is accompanied by a digital campaign that focuses on the technologies of the new camera range.

The ad ends with the line: images.like.no.other

Credits

Project name: Foam City
Creative agency: Fallon London
Client & their job title: James Kennedy, General Manager, Sony Marketing Communications Europe
Brief: Unite Sony’s digital camera brands under one umbrella campaign
Creatives: Samuel Akesson & Tomas Mankovsky
Agency Producer: Emma Gooding
Planner: Heidi Hackemer
Production Company: HLA
Director: Simon Ratigan
Editor: Bruce Townend at The Quarry
Post-production: MPC
Audio post-production: Wave
Media Agency: OMD
Media Strategist: Rupert Holroyd
Exposure: TV

“Agency.com-lite” expands into mainland Europe

iCrossing bought their first shop in mainland Europe with the purchase of German search and affiliate shop 3GNet.

The buy brings iCrossing a 70-person outfit that specializes in search engine optimization, along with paid search and affiliate marketing — basicvally all the stuff that iCrossing specializes in already. 3GNet is based in Munich and has an office in Berlin. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition is the fifth in the past two years for iCrossing, which is backed by $120 million in financing. The agency has used earlier acquisitions of Newgate Internet (paid search) and Proxicom (Web development) to add capabilities to its routes as a search optimization firm. It also bought Spannerworks in the UK in February 2007, giving the company a base in London.

Most of iCrossing’s management over that time has come from Agency.com — including Don Scales, iCrossing’s President who joined when he left Agency.com over “strategic differences” two years ago.

3GNet clients include Epson, which is an iCrossing client in the U.S., eBay and Esprit.

With the acquisition, iCrossing will have more than 200 employees in Europe. The addition of Proxicom and geographic expansion makes iCrossing more than a search shop, Herzog said.

“Our competitive set has clearly changed,” he said. “We’re seeing Avenue A, Digitas and the ad holding companies as the set we’re up against most these days.”

Pump you up…

Three agencies are pumped up to compete as finalists in a review of creative advertising duties on Gold’s Gym.

The shops: Publicis Groupe’s Publicis & Hal Riney in San Francisco, Omnicom Group’s Zimmerman in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Havas’ McKinney in Durham, N.C. are juiced up for the account worth about $15 million a year. Final presentations are to take place sometime in May.

The winning creative agency will succeed independent Riester in Phoenix, which has handled the ad account for about three years.

Gold’s, a division of TRT Holdings, operates more than 620 gyms in 30 countries, including 520 in the U.S alone. The company is based in Dallas.

Who the fuck said you can’t go home again?

Yoda Bob has pulled one of his own back into the fold — and the added bonus — it hurts one of his main competitors.

Mauro Cavalletti is returning to R/GA as executive creative director after three years at other shops, including Organic and most recently AKQA, where he was group creative director.

Cavalletti, 46, begins work at R/GA in mid-May, when it will open in San Francisco. The West Coast outpost is the New York-based agency’s third office, following its expansion to London about two years ago.

Adweek has more details:

“He’s extraordinary at creative, technology and user experience,” said Bob Greenberg, CEO of R/GA. “It’s all the things we need and want to get. He’s a real manager and can handle large clients.”

R/GA is looking at office space in San Francisco that could house as many as 80 employees, Greenberg said. By the end of 2008, the shop expects roughly 25-30 workers. R/GA has more than 600 employees in New York and 30 in London.

“We opened in San Francisco not based on business but based on talent,” he said. “Talent is the biggest issue facing agencies today. It’s the biggest open creative and technology talent pool other than New York.”

While Greenberg sees AKQA as R/GA’s main rival, he said the shop would not specifically target talent from there.

“It’s not so much the agencies but the Yahoo!s and Googles,” he said. “All the technology companies have many potential hires for us.”"

Now Bob is getting a little silly there — hiring from the Yahoos and Googles would just be fucking dumb for an agency — unless it was a straight tech job that is.  Having experience with those companies, it would be a clusterfuck if you tried to convert them to the agency lifestyle because the mentality is completely different and the client demands would cause the new people to lose their shit — quickly.

At AKQA, Cavalletti worked on several accounts, including Target, Method and Kraft. He led Organic’s user experience practice in both New York and San Francisco from 2005-06. In his past life at R/GA, Cavalletti rose from senior interaction designer to interaction design director to creative director from 1999 to 2005.

Cavalletti will initially work on Nike at R/GA, along with new clients the office acquires. He will report to Nick Law, R/GA’s chief creative officer for North America. R/GA has also landed two local clients that Greenberg declined to name — speculation has that one of them could be Levi’s.

Y&R’s Goldsmith doesn’t let the door hit his ass on the way out

Gary Goldsmith, North American chief creative officer at Young & Rubicam based in NYC, bailed out of the agency after 2 1/2 years, Y&R confirmed today.

He became more than a tad redundant to the Y&R family when worldwide CEO Hamish McLennan’s went out and hired Saatchi & Saatchi CCO Tony Granger as worldwide creative director back in November 2007.

Granger has not yet started at his new gig, given a lengthy notice period in his Saatchi contract, but sources now expect him to arrive in early May. He’ll be based in the New York office.

Y&R said only that Goldsmith was exiting to “pursue other interests.” (ed note: where on the carousel do you figure he’ll end up?)

More from Adweek:

“Since McLennan took the reins of Y&R in June 2006, several top executives have left, including his predecessor, Ann Fudge, who also was CEO of Y&R Brands; worldwide creative director Michael Patti; global vice chairman June Blocklin; and North American chief marketing officer Sally Kennedy. All four left at the end of 2006.

At the same time, McLennan has made several top hires, chief among them Granger and global chief digital officer Tarik Sedky, who returned to Y&R last summer from Atmosphere BBDO. Last spring, McLennan also recruited Mitch Caplan from The Kaplan Thaler Group here to fill the North American CMO role.”

There seems to be a fuck of a lot of turmoil in the creative end of the business these days — hey commenters (not too sound too Seinfeld about it all) but “What’s the fucking deal do you figure?” Is it cyclical, the clients, the suits doing their irrational freakout to cover their own fuckups? Possibilities abound!

I’m outta here…Marty Orzio bails out on EnergyBBDO

So word on the street is that Marty Orzio, the CCO of EnergyBBDO in Chicago, has resigned. We are waiting on confirmation from the powers that be at BBDO — but we’ll see what happens.

A bit from EnergyBBDO’s website & PR people on Marty’s career:

“Marty Orzio began his professional life as a high school English teacher. He made a career change at 28, going to work in the direct-mail department of Wunderman Worldwide. His next job was at Lowe&Partners,where he rose from copywriter to executive vice president to creative group head. Prior to joining BBDO,he was executive creative director at Merkley Newman Harty. His clients have included Forbes,Citibank,Sprite,Diet Coke,BMW Motorcycles,United Healthcare and Partnership for a Drug Free America. His work for Mercedes Benz has won virtually every industry award,including a Gold Lion at Cannes.

Some notable campaigns developed under Marty: new Altoids (“A slap to the cerebellum”), Canadian Club (“Damn right your dad drank it”), Orbit, Jim Beam, Aleve Super Bowl spot (with Leonard Nimoy), Lifesavers

New business gained: Dial (includes Dial for Men, Right Guard), Brinker, Beam, White Sox, U.S. News & World Report, LaSalle Bank, expanded global responsibilities on Bayer and Wrigley.”

I’ll start the speculation — we’ll we see Marty escape to NYC like all the other Chicago creatives lately — or perhaps he’ll join the carousel and end up replacing say….Mark Figliulo — the dude at Y&R that is apparently on the verge of joining TBWA \Chiat Day in NYC as the grand poo-bah of all things creative.

UPDATE:

Apparently Marty is bailing out to spend more time with the wife in NYC.

Jim Hyman and Greg Braun, the gcd’s, are going to the main ship until a replacement is found (there will be an “aggressive search” apparently) and they’ll be in charge of the golden boys over there Frank Dattalo and Mike Roe

Richard’s Lunch Makes Us Barf (Just A Little)

Richard Kirshenbaum invites you to lunch to chat about “creativity, and personal style, and art, and weird inspiring things” during his new TV show, ‘Creative Lunch.’ Check out the video above of Richard on Deutsch’s Big Idea if you’ve never seen the man in action. Hey… Holy shit! Is Richard going to be the new Tim Gunn, but with feathered hair! Wait… the press release goes on to read:

“-its about those stories that usually aren’t told but should be – like mistakes that are blessings in disguise, or inspired moments that change the course of a project, or life. its candid, witty, insightful, and entertaining.”

Shiiit. He’s the new Oprah! Well, actually no, since the show airs on Plum, the television station for rich, white folks in places like Aspen and Nantucket. Why is Richie qualified to speak on such a wide array of topics to other rich white folks like Matt Lauer and heiress Dylan Lauren? According to the press release:

“Richard’s diverse interests include penning plays, and writing, and his latest book “Closing the Deal” a relationship help book for women has been published in nine languages.”

…

…

Oh, sorry. You know when you feel like you’re going to barf in your mouth, like it creeps up the back of your throat and burns a little? That’s what happened. Right then. I’m sure many of the (very cool) KBP employees can relate.