J. Walter Thompson Co. today announced that it is eliminating the position of worldwide chief creative officer. Matt Eastwood, who has held that position since July 2014, will leave to “pursue other interests,” according to the agency’s statement. “We are reimagining the future of the agency,” Tamara Ingram, JWT Worldwide CEO, said in a statement….
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Facebook introduced its Facebook Lite Android application in June 2015, saying at the time that it was designed for emerging markets and areas with poor connectivity. This week, the app is being rolled out in more developed markets as a lightweight alternative to the social network’s flagship Android app. Facebook confirmed that Facebook Lite is…
J. Walter Thompson has parted ways with Worldwide Chief Creative Officer Matt Eastwood as part of a “structural decision,” according to Worldwide CEO Tamara Ingram.
“We are reimagining the future of the agency,” said Ingram in a statement. “This was a structural decision that will allow us to be more agile, leverage our collective global bench strength and encourage the burgeoning diverse ‘maker culture’ growing within J. Walter Thompson. We would like to thank Matt Eastwood for his contributions and wish him continued success in his future endeavors.”
“I am incredibly proud of what we achieved creatively during my tenure at J. Walter Thompson,” said Eastwood. “Having assessed my personal and professional goals, now feels like the right time to move on to my next adventure.”
JWT is parting ways with worldwide chief creative officer Matt Eastwood, who is leaving to pursue an unspecified venture, and eliminating the worldwide CCO role at the agency, Adweek reported. Eastwood joined JWT in that role from DDB New York back in 2014.
JWT worldwide CEO Tamara Ingram made the announcement in an internal memo today, which we’ve included below.
Everyone,
I’m writing to share the news that Matt Eastwood, Worldwide Chief Creative Officer, has exited J. Walter Thompson to pursue a new adventure. We thank him for his contributions and wish him continued success in his future endeavors.
We are reimagining the future of the agency. This is a structural decision that will allow us to be more agile, leverage our collective global bench strength and encourage the burgeoning diverse ‘maker culture’ growing within J. Walter Thompson. As such, we have no plans to replace the role.
Creativity remains at the very core of our business, but today it is an even more collaborative process. It is borderless. It is broadly focused. We are increasingly relying on the people who are closest to making and creating the work. And, we are re-imagining the future of how this shift will be reflected within our organization and our leadership structure.
The Worldwide Creative Council will evolve to better reflect the needs of the agency. It will continue to be a pivotal part of our organization internally, and set standards and practices for how we improve the quality of our work. And, there will be a fluid roster of talented individuals with myriad skill sets.
Additional strategic changes will include the use of technology to evaluate creative concepts at a much earlier stage. This will allow us to be iterative in real time and to ensure we are evolving our work to be stronger, more innovative and have a greater impact on our clients’ business.
I am committed to protecting, supporting and developing the creative community and culture within JWT. I am looking forward to sharing more specific information soon. For now, it’s business as usual and we will keep the trains running as we head into Cannes.
Tam
Happy World Sleep Day! Make sure to rest up before any St. Patrick’s Day festivities tomorrow, whether that’s going to a parade, eating corned beef and cabbage or drinking green beer.
Before we head into the weekend, let’s check out some agency news.
Women come first
Kroger Co., the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., will remove publications about assault rifles from its stores, wading further into the U.S. debate on gun control.
The move comes a few weeks after the grocer joined Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods in tightening gun restrictions in the aftermath of the deadly school shooting last month in Parkland, Florida. Now, Kroger is pulling “a few assault-rifle themed periodicals” from its supermarkets, but will continue to carry some gun magazines, according to spokeswoman Kristal Howard.
This week, students across the nation walked out of their classrooms in an act of solidarity with the Florida high school students. The Senate Judiciary Committee met on Wednesday to discuss gun control measures, though a formal bill debate has not yet been held on the floor. On March 24, gun control groups are planning the “March for Our Lives” in Washington.
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Toby Barlow, who left WPP’s Ford-dedicated agency GTB a little over a year ago, is launching a new venture in Detroit called Lafayette American.
The agency seems to be following industry trends away from the traditional agency model, with the Detroit Free Press reporting it will be made up of a small team from various industries seeking to solve “interesting riddles and puzzles” for clients. Lafayette American launches with a team of 6-8, including head of design Meg Jannott, and a small roster of clients including Ralph C. Wilson Foundation and Kelly Services. Barlow plans to keep his staff small while leveraging a team of freelance creatives and designers, and work with clients on specialize projects.
“We don’t want to parasitically stick to clients,” Barlow told Detroit Free Press. “We want to come in and help clients come up with creative and interesting solutions, and when we’ve helped solve the problem, we’ll sail away and on to other adventures.”
“A lot of large agencies when new technologies emerge they sort of say, ‘Yeah, we can do that, too,’ and they build a new wing onto their agency and just start charging the client for it,” he added. “Our thesis is that you just can’t keep slapping those Lego pieces on without it collapsing at some point. What we want to do is stay small and then add those pieces as needed and then snap them off when they’re not needed any more. It’s a much more nimble model that’s built for the complexity of our times.”
That doesn’t mean Barlow’s shop would decline a longer relationship with a client as long as they “keep bringing us interesting problems and interesting riddles,” as Barlow put it, just that it won’t overstay its welcome.
The ironic thing about the nearly pinpoint accuracy with which we can locate people as they use their mobile devices is that their physical whereabouts have less and less to do with where they actually are.
We have the technology to figure out, for instance, that a given person is in a specific storein some cases right down to the department he’s in. But is he really there there? Is he shopping, with the intent to actually buy something, or is he somewhere elselike on the Amazon app on his phone, checking for a better price?
Likewise, we have the technology to figure out that a given person is in a specific coffee shop. But is she really present? As in, observant and engaged in her surroundings and, you know, having a conversation with her fellow patrons? (The New York Times recently reported about the plague of the modern cafe as a sort of morgue-like free WeWork space in an article headlined “What to Do When Laptops and Silence Take Over Your Cafe?”)
Just days after its chief operating officer quit to run Seattle’s proposed NHL expansion team, the National Football League finds itself in search of a new marketing head.
Dawn Hudson on Friday told The Wall Street Journal she was stepping down as chief marketing officer of the NFL, a post she’d held since September 2014. Hudson, who intimated that her position at the league since day one had been conceived as a short-term appointment, said she was not looking to assume another marketing role after she officially parts ways with the NFL in April.
A former PepsiCo North America President and CEO, Cola War veteran Hudson first met NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in 2002, when Pepsi unseated Coca-Cola as the league’s official soft-drink sponsor. Prior to joining Pepsi in 1996, Hudson was managing director of the now-defunct agency DMB&B’s New York office and put in several years at DDB Needham, Chicago.
Few agencies have as strong a relationship with a sports franchise as Copacino+Fujikado has with the Seattle Mariners. Each year, the Seattle agency rolls out a slew of wry spots starring players from the current roster–and focusing at least as much on their personality and humor as their on-field accomplishments. C+F and the Mariners have…
Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from more than eight million smart TVs. The ads here ran on national TV for the first time yesterday.
A few highlights: Google serves up another in a series of ads calling attention to how the NCAA uses the Google Cloud to find insights in its data. Fruit of the Loom presents a commercial-within-a-commercial promoting its Everlight line of underwear. And a State Farm representative really means it when he tells a customer that State Farm will always be there for her.
Facebook’s latest media ambitions include long-form news programs, too.
Details are starting to emerge about the news section Facebook has said it will build in its fledgling Watch video hub, apparently partly as an effort to encourage reputable information to compete with fake news. Axios reported this week that the news tab in Watch will arrive this summer.
And while it was known that Facebook has solicited proposals from about 10 media outlets to come up with news shows for Watch, the videos were largely expected to be short, in line with the predominant sensibility on platforms such as Snapchat. But some of the news outlets may actually pursue longer programming, making their shows more resemble TV than the drive-by videos that Facebook users have come to expect.
After a week filled with AI and VR, one SXSW activation is keeping it simple and artful. Mondo creates screen prints for films, TV shows, video games and comics, as well as record labels, toys and apparel. The company has a permanent gallery in Austin, Texas and during SXSW has invited festivalgoers to immerse themselves…
From Westworld craze to Elon Musk to dozens of branded activations, it’s been a busy week for marketers at South by Southwest. For this week’s recap of digital stats, we’re looking at the standout numbers behind the festival that got people talking. HBO’s Westworld craze HBO’s recreation of Sweetwater, the world within Westworld, was one…
Ever since “people-based marketing” was introduced at Advertising Week in 2014, it has become a strategic imperative for almost every brand. Fortune 500 companies are investing in and adopting the tech, agency media buyers are mandating it in insertion orders, and DSPs, DMPs and measurement providers are strategizing around how they can implement this into…
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