Hasta La Creative!

ICF Olson, the agency created by management consultancy ICF International’s 2014 acquisition of the independent Minneapolis/St. Paul shop Olson, parted with its president and COO Margaret Murphy this week. The parent company has begun the search for a new chief operating officer, and no ICF Olson employee will hold the title of president moving forward.

An ICF International spokesperson provided the following statement:

Louise Clements, executive vice president for ICF International and group lead for ICF Olson, will be expanding her leadership team with the future addition of a Chief Operating Officer for the ICF Olson group in order to better serve client needs. As a result of this new organizational structure, Margaret Murphy, formerly President of Olson in Minneapolis, is no longer with the company. We thank Margaret for her leadership and wish her well in future endeavors.

ICF acquired Olson, which had previously been known as one of the country’s largest independent agencies despite a 2009 sale to private equity group KRG Capital Partners, in October 2014 for $295 million in cash. At the time, the agency stated that selling to a consultancy rather than a traditional holding company would allow for a greater degree of operational independence across the Olson network.

The agency added ICF to its name six months ago just before hiring global agency lead Louise Clements, who previously served as president of MRM//McCann East for more than three years after holding a similar position at Toronto’s MacLaren McCann since 2010 and worked in the marketing departments of AOL, Rogers Media and Facebook before entering the agency world.

Clements currently leads the entire ICF Olson Group, which includes the ad agency as well as the PR/social media firm Olson Engage, the loyalty/CRM shop Olson 1:1, and digital/mobile integration operation ICF Olson Digital Solutions. The network currently includes around 800 employees in 14 offices across the U.S., Canada and India.

Murphy has worked in the marketing industry for more than 25 years. She became an Olson employee when the company acquired her former company, Denali Marketing, in 2010. She served as president and managing partner of that business as well as the resulting unit OlsonDenali, and in February 2011 she was promoted to president and COO of Olson, which is currently the largest integrated marketing agency in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

Olson’s clients include Skittles, Bissell, Target and The California Lottery, among many other brands.

A Índia possui cidades com péssima qualidade do ar – e essa foi a inspiração da startup indiana Graviky Labs, nascida de uma spin-off do Media Lab do MIT na cidade de Bangalore, que desenvolveu um processo para usar o carbono presente no ar poluído para fazer tinta, a Air Ink. O vídeo acima mostra uma ação […]

> LEIA MAIS: Transformando poluição em tinta

The angst was palpable at Digital Media Strategies 2016, an annual industry conference held on Wednesday and Thursday at a hotel in Times Square.

While there are myriad challenges facing the media companies of today, combatting the power and market share of the social media giants — often called “the platforms,” with an increasingly ominous tone — seems to be top-of-mind, and came up repeatedly throughout the conference.

“The damage that the platforms … can do to journalism and to news is pretty profound,” said M. Scott Havens, Bloomberg Media’s global head of digital, who spoke Wednesday.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Circus Marketing hired Federico Durán as executive creative director of its Los Angeles office. In the new role, Durán will lead the 22-employee creative department on work for clients including Netflix, Warner Bros. Pictures, Spotify, Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS and Grupo Bimbo. He will report directly to founder/CEO Bruno Lambertini.

“We opened Circus in Los Angeles because this city is the center of technological advancements and the entertainment industry,” Lamberti said in a statement. “With Federico joining the team, with his years of experience and his creative leadership, [we’ll] have the key to consolidate our goals in this context of constant growth.”

Durán joins Circus Marketing from Conill Saatchi & Saatchi L.A., where he has served as a creative director since November of 2010, leading creative on the agency’s Toyota account. Prior to joining Conill he spent six years as an associate creative director with Bromley Communications, working with clients including Nestle, Continental Airlines, Coors Light and the NBA.

(TrendHunter.com) The Reebok x Tristan Eaton ‘Graffiti Collage Collection’ is an artful range of athletic clothing for yoga that includes tank tops, sports bras and shorts that include vibrant prints that…

The angst was palpable at Digital Media Strategies 2016, an annual industry conference held on Wednesday and Thursday at a hotel in Times Square.

While there are myriad challenges facing the media companies of today, combatting the power and market share of the social media giants — often called “the platforms,” with an increasingly ominous tone — seems to be top-of-mind, and came up repeatedly throughout the conference.

“The damage that the platforms … can do to journalism and to news is pretty profound,” said M. Scott Havens, Bloomberg Media’s global head of digital, who spoke Wednesday.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The lawsuit filed by former JWT communications chief Erin Johnson and the agency and its former Chairman-CEO Gustavo Martinez is grinding on. In a court hearing today, Judge Paul Oetken approved a move by Ms. Johnson’s attorneys to add Title VII discrimination and retaliation claims to the suit, filed in New York in March over alleged racist and sexist comments by Mr. Martinez.

Ms. Johnson’s law team from Vladeck, Raskin & Clark filed a letter to Judge Oetken on Aug. 25, requesting a conference “to discuss defendants’ refusal to stipulate to plaintiff’s filing a Second Amended Complaint” according to the document.

The defendants’ lawyers accused Ms. Johnson of trying “to avoid the scrutiny of the EEOC (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)” with the Second Amended Complaint for Title VII,” the document states. One of Ms. Johnson’s lawyers, Anne Vladeck, said on Friday that going through the EEOC could take years and the team wanted to go to court “as soon as possible” due to the alleged sex, rape and anti-sematic comments the plaintiff was facing.

Continue reading at AdAge.com