Hasta La Creative!

(TrendHunter.com) In Asia, any activity can be made extreme; in Korea, talented acrobats have turned the benign childhood pastime of playing on a teeter totter into something far more exciting and dangerous.

Watch as…

Mark Wnek. Oh boy… Opening this pandora’s box may come back to haunt us, but lets do it. Let’s get crazy.

A recent explosion over Wnek and the agency he runs, Lowe New York, comes by way of vicious comments on the Adscam blog. Parker wrote what appeared to be a simple shout out to Lowe who recently won the Price Waterhouse Cooper account. You may be surprised that Lowe won the negligible account, but you can’t possibly be shocked that a shit storm about Wnek is taking place. Everyone has a story about Wnek – good and bad. The man has been kicking around the business for eons. We bet you have a story, too.

So, Lowe. You never hear anything about Lowe New York anymore. The shop was once a bright, albeit always troubled, spot on Madison Avenue. Since Wnek has come along, the shop has fallen into a strange obscurity of sorts. Good creatives atrophy away in that new office of theirs, while Wnek pens post after post for the ad journos. So, what’s the deal? You be the judge from our patch work time line below:

April 2005 – Mark Wnek became the New York chairman and chief creative officer at Lowe in 2005 prompting articles with the title, “Is Mark Wnek The New King Of New York?”

Sept 2005 – He instituted a leadership team that included creative director, John Hobbs and Peter Rosch from DDB. Also along for the ride was Fernanda Romano, an interactive wunderkind from Sao Paulo Brasil.

August 2006 – “Two-thirds of the second tier of creative leadership at Lowe in New York – executive creative directors Peter Rosch and John Hobbs – leave the shop after less than a year.”

January 2006 – Sal Taibi is named the agency’s president.

February 2006 – CEO Susan Cantor leaves Lowe.

April 2006 – They lose out on the Beck’s review to Ground Zero.

March 2006 – Lowe promotes Thomas Guerin to director of account management.

May 2006 – Electrolux shifted its creative and media duties Lowe, New York to DDB, New York. Electrolux Home Care Products was also planning to move duties for its vacuum cleaners, which were also at Lowe. Meanwhile, Lowe Worldwide remained the global AOR. Crap. Cut out the New York office? Crap. Crap. Crap.

June 2006 – Nancy Hill joins Lowe as President. Client Mass Mutual puts its account up for review.

August 2006 – Lowe executive creative director Dean Hacohen leaves to join Cramer-Krasselt. He was close to Wnek’s predecessor, chief creative officer Gary Goldsmith.

September 2006 – Lowe beats out W+K to win XM Satellite Radio, which is now at McCann.

May 2007 – Romano shifts to Lowe Latina amid much speculation.

September 2007 – Saab moves their account to McCann.

December 2007 – Lowe wins the Aquos brand of televisions.

July 2007 – The Splenda account moves onto BBDO. J&J also moves some other work out of the Alchemy business at Lowe.

August 2007 – Nancy Hill, CEO of Lowe New York, departs for greener pastures after allegedly battling it out with Wnek. She leaves without another job to go to. As we all know, Hill is now heading up the 4A’s. She’s doing a darn good job at it, too.

May 2008 – Serge Del Grosso, who was Lowe’s managing director of media strategy, leaves to join MPG.

February 2008 – Lowe picks up creative and media duties for the Aruba Tourism Authority.

___

Whew. Keep in mind the shop also lost Gordon’s Seafood and Darden’s Smokey Bones somewhere in there, as well. We may have missed some minor wins, but it’s a pretty good shake down overall. Meanwhile, Lowe global is sailing along just fine and dandy.

What’s the deal? Everyone points the finger at Wnek. Can you blame the downfall of an entire shop on one person? Yes. Is it all Wnek’s fault? Maybe. Riddle us this – if he’s all that bad (tipsters we’re looking at you) how does he keep his job? Seriously. Need to know.

The comment section awaits.

More: Steve Biegel’s Judaic Scarlet Letter

Comments (View)

function() {
links = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
query = ‘?’;
for(var i = 0; i = 0) {
query += ‘url’ + i + ‘=’ + encodeURIComponent(links[i].href) + ‘&’;
}
}
document.write(”);
})();

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

(TrendHunter.com) US parents can now hire a private service to check if their teenagers are getting involved with drugs. Sniff Dogs offers a way of checking out drugs in private homes for the first time. The service is…

(TrendHunter.com) The mountainous Sagada province on Luzon Island in the Philippines and in other countries like Southern China have high cliffs which bear hanging coffins placed far above the ground.

The coffins of…

Football is for girls. That’s right. It’s for girl who are more concerned with how they look on the field then how they play.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The decline in newspapers' paid circulation is accelerating, according to new statistics today from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Papers' average weekday paid circulation fell to 38.2 million copies across the six months ending Sept. 30, down 4.64% from the equivalent period a year earlier.

LONDON – The business functions of the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star and the Shropshire Star are to be merged in a bid to slash costs by £3m with the loss of 120 jobs.

LONDON – ITN Source has officially launched Diagonal View, a quirky and obscure video package, syndicated to partners including MySpace, YouTube and MSN.

LONDON – IPC Inspire’s specialist title Cage & Aviary Birds has relaunched with a new look masthead and range of new features.

AMSTERDAM – Clubbyclub, a bespoke social networking site billed as a place for friends to share photos and videos in private without the prying eyes of the “ex, boss or mother-in-law” has gone live.