Hasta La Creative!

R/GA Austin appointed Jonathan Woytek as executive creative director. In the role, Woytek will be creative lead of R/GA Austin, tasked with growing the office and shaping its direction while partnering with R/GA Austin vice president, managing director Candice Hahn and reporting to R/GA U.S. executive vice president, executive creative directors Chloe Gottlieb and Taras Wayner. 

“We are thrilled to welcome Jonathan’s creative genius and masterful knowledge of UX to our creative team here at R/GA,”  Wayner said in a statement.

“His impressive work speaks for itself, and we look forward to working alongside him to continue to create more world-class work in the Austin office,” added Gottlieb.

Woytek joins R/GA from Pereira & O’Dell, where he served as executive creative director. He originally joined Pereira & O’Dell as a creative director in September of 2010, and has worked with clients including Skype, LEGO, Hyatt, Godiva, and Corona while with the agency. Before joining Pereira & O’Dell he spent three years with MRM//McCann San Francisco, serving as vice president and then senior vice president, director of user experience, establishing and leading the agency’s UX practice and working with clients including Microsoft, Intel, HP, Tom’s Shoes, and The Boys and Girls Clubs of America. That followed stints at Razorfish and Publicis, working with clients such as Adidas, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Mattel, Oracle, Red Bull, Samsung, Sony, and Visa during the five-year period.

He was promoted to ECD last February following the departure of Jaime Robinson, who left Pereira to go to Wieden + Kennedy and later launched her own agency Joan along with former Ogilvy/BBH/Saatchi account lead Lisa Clunie.

“I am excited to join the team at R/GA, a company that has a life-long history of groundbreaking techniques and unparalleled storytelling through media,” said Woytek. “As a Texas native, it will be great to return to Austin and collaborate with the impressive roster of clients to create work that changes the way we see and experience stories.”

Pereira & O’Dell continues to produce intriguing work for Skype, with their latest, “Turning the tide” marking a shift in approach.

Last year, the agency focused on the emotion of the personal connections it helped foster, through its “Stay Together” campaign and its highlight, “The Born Friends Family Portrait.” With “Turning the tide,” Pereira & O’Dell focuses instead on how the service helps a pair of journalists tell the story of Kiribati, the island nation that is in danger of being wiped off the map by 2040, thanks to rising oceans caused by climate change. Indeed, the people of Kiribati are already becoming the “world’s first climate change refugees” as the rising ocean levels have contaminated their food and water.

The “modern mobile news team” of Anna Therese Day and Gianluca Panella are telling the island’s story, and utilize Skype as an important. “…Skype is second nature to us,” Anna says, “Being able to instantly share information, images, files…it means you can get to the heart of the story quickly.”While this inserts Skype into the conversation, it doesn’t do a whole lot to differentiate the brand from its competitors. Still, Pereira & O’Dell crafted an affecting spot, allowing Skype to tell an important story that many viewers might be unfamiliar with (although the story has been covered by a few major news outlets, including CNN). The agency seems to have made a choice to value storytelling and allying Skype with an important cause over overt branding. How effective you view the spot as will largely depend on which of these factors you place the most value on. (more…)

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The onion alert is in full effect. Skype has been promoting their global capabilities with a “Stay Together” campaign produced by Pereira & O’Dell, and the fourth video in the series, “The Born Friends Family Portrait,” is a smart showcase of the program’s utility. Two girls, Sarah from Indiana and Paige from Auckland, were both born without fully developed left arms and formed a long distance friendship over the years. Sarah and Paige are now teenagers, and as you can see in the accompanying clip, finally met in-person. It’s touching and respectfully filmed.

The three prior videos cover similar stories – a father talking to his family still in Africa, a zookeeper in America keeping tabs on an animal family in Australia, and a two young cousins (common theme) closing the gap between Brazil and America. We should probably expect more tearjerkers from Skype, because these are the kind of tales that sell themselves. No misdirection or exploitation, just a documentary setup that has the right kind of appeal. Credits after the jump.

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