Hasta La Creative!

Well, guess this isn’t totally breaking news at this point but Gary Koepke, who co-founded (along with now-Hill Holliday EVP/CCO Lance Jensen) Boston’s now-defunct Modernista!, is moving up the charts at SapientNitro. Just over a year after joining the latter agency as VP/global executive creative director, Koepke is being bumped up to the big chair as he’s been appointed as chief creative officer, North America for SapientNitro. He fills a role that’s been open since Kathy Delaney left in June 2011.

Regarding taking the helm at the agency of “idea engineers,” Koepke says in a statement, “Joining SapientNitro a year ago started as an experiment and turned into a renaissance. I found in SapientNitro the disruptive spirit and focus on the future needed to truly innovate in the agency space that I thought I’d only be able to find by pursuing another start up.” Along with his new CCO role, Koepke, who has led creative on Chrysler, Fiat and Florida tourism efforts during his time at SapientNitro and remains based out of Boston, will also join the agency’s Global Creative Council. Along with his ad career, which also included helping up open W+K New York, Koepke also worked outside the industry as founding creative director for Vice and directing music videos for David Bowie and U2.

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In a TBWA Facebook post yesterday, the agency wrote “At TBWA\Istanbul the newest interns were picked based on talent AND passion for advertising.” This means that, when potential interns showed up at TBWA’s office in Turkey’s largest city, they were asked to don special headgear that would sense their brain activity. They were then shown a series of legendary ads, while a neuroscientist (presumably) compiled data on their reactions, measuring excitement and infatuation. TBWA branded this measurement category “AdLove,” and from 503 applicants, the five with the most AdLove were given TBWA internships.

Quantifying passion seems completely counter-intuitive to me, though I can’t claim to know anything about the science behind it. When advertising is all about crafting a message (and manipulating your viewer/user) agencies are much better off just assessing an intern’s ability to bullshit their way through an interview, or answer related questions, skills they’ll actually use in the office. Passion should be evident without a sophisticated sensor, and forgoing the expression of it to go straight to neurological action seems the product of poor ad understanding. It may be a cute technological gimmick, but does nothing to prove how qualified (or potentially stoked) these interns are to do the job at hand.

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As noted above, we’ve received confirmation that after spending 29 years at TBWA, global chief marketing officer Laurie Coots‘s last day at the Omnicom-owned agency is today. According to those in the know, who say she “will be greatly missed,” Coots will be leaving to work on a combination of business consulting, creative endeavors and boards.

From what we’ve been told, there are no immediate plans at TBWA to replace Coots, who over her three-decade career at said agency, has worked with clients including Absolut, Bayer, GSK, Kraft, Pfizer, Pepsi and VISA. During her long stay at TBWA, the New York-based Coots moved up the ladder from serving as new business director, then being appointed as North American CMO in 1997 before assuming her global CMO role in 2001.

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Another day, another IPG memo obtained. One thing we can confirm according the note sent to staff this morning from Jacki Kelley, North American CEO/president, global clients for IPG Mediabrands, is that the agency has welcomed Teddy Lynn and Mark Himmelsbach to the fold.

As our ever-reliable tipsters hinted at a couple of weeks ago, the pair, who recently left BBDO NY, will be working together once again as they’re now serving as CCO and COO, respectively, of a new Mediabrands unit called Mediabrands Publishing. This actually marks Lynn’s second stint within the IPG umbrella as he last served as ECD/content & experiences at UM for nearly three before joining BBDO. During their time at the latter agency, Lynn and Himmelsbach held the titles of EVP/director of content and EVP/director of digital strategy, North America, respectively.

Anyhow, you can read Kelley’s memo after the jump to explain what Mediabrands Publishing entails.

continued…

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Stephen Icardi, associate art director at Digitas, and writer Catherine Penfold-Waxman, have assembled the ultimate shopping destination for the ad world. Because nothing is buyable yet, you may find yourself salivating at the possibility of the David Ogilvy Magical Tagline Pipe, or Talent Nurturing Breasts. (“Who knows when your junior help will become your future boss, so start them off right with some sweet nurturing.”)

Creative Miscellaneous Materials LLC stocks something for everyone: an Acronym Polishing Kit for account managers, a Meeting Fodder Detector for hungry interns, and Work Party Unmemory Drops for the CD who drinks the pain away. My favorite is the “Make it Digital” Powder, which is funny because it already seems to exist, in the form clients who refuse to acknowledge the possibilities of online advertising.

This is a fun little piece of gentle in-joking, and I hope that Icardi plans on making actual fake products, because they’ll be perfect Christmas gifts. I would like the Criticism-filtering Head Gear, please, to deal with some of the more uncouth commenters out there.

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A week after he initially began his experiment, ad man Marty Weiss‘s search for friends in New York City soldiers forth, only this time with a little less success. Weiss’s man-on-the-street project, where he simply asks, “would you be my friend?” to total strangers, is essentially a self-promotional effort for his newly rebranded agency called, yes, Marty Weiss & Friends, which works with the likes of Grand Central and Sobieski vodka. If you stick around until the end, you’ll see Weiss, who seems like a friendly enough character though NYC passersby aren’t really having it, eventually catch up with a rather familiar name from the ad world. During his 25-year ad career, Weiss worked at the likes of TBWA\Chiat\Day and served as creative director/founding partner of another New York-based agency called Weiss Whitten Stagliano for well over a decade. You can check out his YouTube page here.

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In a somewhat surprising weekend move that’s now been broadcast everywhere, French advertising network Publicis and New York-based Omnicom Group announced today that they are merging, supplanting London’s WPP to become to world’s largest advertising firm.

The news comes as a bit of a shock, especially considering the announcement was made on a summer weekend. Reports of merger negotiations first happened on Friday afternoon, followed by more concrete details on the merger coming out yesterday via a report from Bloomberg. The newly christened Publicis Omnicom Group will be led by Omnicom CEO John Wren and Publicis CEO Maurice Levy, who will acts as co-chief executives.

The merger is sending shockwaves throughout the industry, with reaction to news quite mixed. While many agree that shareholders will benefit from the news, looming doubts remain about how the new company will strike a balance of power with its bases split between continents, as well as how Publicis Omnicom Group will go about solving the many client conflicts as competing brands (Coca-Cola and Pepsi, McDonald’s and Taco Bell) are brought under one roof.

Omnicom (whose properties include BBDO, DDB, and TBWA) and Publicis (whose properties include Leo Burnett, DigitasLBi, Saatchi & Saatchi and media giant Starcom) have a combined annual revenue of $23 billion. We’ve heard that Levy has sent out a network-wide email about the merger.

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This news wouldn’t feel right if we covered it on any day other than Friday. Andy Leek, former creative at Nothing and now-freelancer at the likes of Tribal DDB, decided to use his artistic skills to paint the first portrait of Prince George earlier this week. He’s now selling the painting on Ebay, with the current bid at £10.50 (just over $16) as of noon today. We can’t confirm whether this is actually the world’s first painted picture of the prince baby, but according to Leek, he “started painting minutes after Wills and Kate emerged on the steps of the Lido wing.”

Think of it as an investment? On the Ebay page, Leek admits to participating in shark wrestling and polar bear back riding, so he could die soon, and “this painting will skyrocket in value.” I’m not an art appreciation expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works, tongue-in-cheekiness aside. The painting isn’t bad, maybe Leek could give it to the royal family as a gift, but he might have to drop the £30 delivery fee.

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After spending ten years at multicultural agency GlobalHue, where she serves as chief financial/operating officer, Gaye Miller-Smiley is being moved into a consulting role and has NOT resigned according to sources familiar with the matter. From what we’ve been told, her day-to-day responsibilities at GH will be transitioned to a longtime senior employee in in the finance department–though no word yet on who this person exactly is. As for Miller-Smiley, the exec joined GlobalHue in 2003 after spending over two decades as a public accountant and has managed the usual CFO/COO duties at the agency including 401(k) matters as well as relationships with vendors, bankers and insurance companies.

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Well, this is an interesting management shakeup in what’s already turned out to be quite the busy month at Campbell Ewald–sorry, Lowe Campbell Ewald. Less than a year after joining up with Detroit-based LCE as chief marketing officer, Barbara Yolles and said agency have parted ways. No word yet on if there are immediate plans to replace her, but this marks the second notable management shift at LCE following the departure of longtime CEO Bill Ludwig, who of course was succeeded by Jim Palmer earlier this month.

As for Yolles, the now-ex-LCE CMO joined from McCann, where she initially served in the same role of the latter’s Midwest region before moving up to chief growth officer, North America. During her career, she also had two stints on the account side at Doner and also served as EVP/group managing director at KBS+. Update: We’ve been told that there are no immediate plans to replaces Yolles at Campbell Ewald as of now.

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