Laughlin Constable has hired Vanessa Watts as its executive VP of media in charge of developing and executing media strategy to define the future direction of client business.
“Vanessa has a wealth of experience delivering full media service to clients and pushing them to do innovative work,” said Mat Lignel, CEO and president of Laughlin Constable, which is based in Milwaukee and Chicago. “Vanessa brings a deep grasp of the media landscape and collaboration to this newly created Media EVP role.”
Watts joins Laughlin from HavasMedia in Chicago, where she led the agency’s new business efforts and worked on Sears Holdings, Reynolds Consumer Products and Valspar Corporation. Her 20 years of experience include stints in Australia, long tenures at prestigious global networks such as BBDO, DDB and Havas, and a portfolio of clients ranging from challenger brands to large national brands.
Laughlin Constable has long offered media planning and buying as part of the services it offers clients, unlike many other independent agencies, because it allows the agency to deliver the right ideas in the right context to consumers.
As EVP of media, Watts will lead a team of media planners and ensure all initiatives are closely tied to clients’ business needs and strategic drivers. “Laughlin Constable is a combination of great talent and culture,” Watts said. “LC was one of the first independent agencies to launch its own trading desk, signaling to me that this was a team committed to delivering strong, creative and spot-on solutions to its clients.”
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More