Hasta La Creative!

BBH New York's chief creative officer, John Patroulis, has led the shop in a wide variety of work since he landed the post in May 2011. Under his leadership, the office has come out with tug-on-the-heartstrings-type work for Google, out-of-the-box outdoor for the Guardian's U.S. launch, and highly entertaining spots for Axe.

But as is the case with the previous creative chiefs we've featured in our ongoing series, it's the things you don't know about Mr. Patroulis that might be more interesting. Below, we outline a few.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The Guardian is set to change its numerous domain names including guardian.co.uk to theguardian.com as part of a shift to a global digital newsbrand and ongoing expansion in the US and Asia-Pacific.

We welcome the return of our monthly contributor Simon Mathews, currently chief strategy officer at West Coast shop, Extractable, who’ s also worked on the strategy side at the likes of Isobar and Molecular during his career. As per usual, we’re not really sure how to preface Mathews’ entry, so let’s just let him do the talking. Take it away, sir.

For the last few days, I’ve been buried deep in a stack of spreadsheets analyzing an annual website user satisfaction survey for one of our clients. The client is a large business-to-business technology firm, primarily targeting engineers, and hence the survey is rich in specific questions around product interests, content consumption and ability to achieve key tasks. This rich data is augmented by connecting reported behavior (the survey) to actual behavior via web analytics to build an all-round picture of their audiences.

When deep in data I have a tendency to sometimes become somewhat (very?) distracted. This week, a particular weakness of mine, geographic trivia, got me sidetracked.  Did you know that, for example, since the revolution / war in Libya there is now no sovereign country in the world with a national flag that is a single solid color with no other markings on it?  So, obviously I love challenges such as the “View from your window” completion on the Daily Dish, where you have to guess a location based just on a photo taken from a hotel window, or Geo Guessr, where the challenge is based off a random Google street view.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The latest viral video hits from Sony PlayStation, Louis Vuitton and Old Spice.

Jo Hagger, the European vice-president of marketing at SapientNitro, is joining headhunting firm The Lighthouse Company as the head of technology and content search.

Twitter is targeting TV advertisers with a new system that will identify people who are tweeting about a brand’s ads.

Grey New York wants to tell you that “It’s Never Not a Good Time for a Refreshing Mike’s.” Excuse the double negative (what about “It’s Always a Good Time…?), but to draw your attention away from the grammatical errors, they included some very, very random celebrity cameos from actor Martin Landau and rapper Coolio. The 30-second spots include some random rhyming that leads to a series of non-sequitors, hence the random celebrities. Random is the only way to describe this campaign.

Before watching these spots, I hadn’t thought of Landau and Coolio in years. Both are stored away firmly in the Club for G-List Celebrities Who Will Never Be Famous Again. In Landau’s defense, he’s 84 and had a memorable run of “Entourage” a few years back (not to mention his Oscar-winning turn as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood). Coolio is Coolio. They both picked up paychecks in return for a loss of dignity. That’s advertising for you. Check out the Coolio spot and credits after the jump.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Vizeum UK has hired Mindshare managing partner Ben Sutherland as its head of performance, replacing David Beale.

The Guardian is looking to reposition itself as a global brand, with the decision to consolidate its digital presence around a single international URL, TheGuardian.com.

(TrendHunter.com) Artist Adel Abdessemed creates conceptual artworks that elicit a range of different emotions. Whether it is a block of mashed deer, twisted plane or fanned machetes, the themes tend to address…