Industry veteran Mark Sitley–whose last staff post was as executive creative director/production at Euro RSCG Worldwide, New York–has partnered with production execs Luke Thornton and Liz Silver to launch Beyond Belief, a new content company which will be headquartered in New York with an office in Los Angeles. Thornton and Silver are the principals in six-year-old, bicoastal/international spot and music video production house Believe Media; their new venture with Sitley is a standalone shop and not a satellite of Believe.
“We’re dedicating ourselves to the creative and nimble production of intellectual property for marketers, produced in any media, in any platform and any venue,” said Sitley who is managing director of Beyond Belief. “Our projects will be as much about film and TV as they might be about gaming, music, publishing, interactive or wireless content. We’re defining our universe as anything that’s not geared to traditional advertising.”
Sitley, Thornton and Silver have a track record in sponsored entertainment–and in collaborating with one another in that space. Prior to Euro RSCG Worldwide, Sitley was director of North American production for Fallon Worldwide, where he oversaw production on the agency’s groundbreaking BMW Films series. The first round of those films was produced by bicoastal Anonymous Content. But Believe Media’s interactive division, i-Believe, played a key role in laying the groundwork for the BMW Films project, helping to develop the idea for the Web-delivered shorts in collaboration with Fallon creatives and doing the initial work on the BMW Films’ down-loadable player. Thornton and Silver were part of that collaboration with Fallon, as were director David van Eyssen, who later left the company, and Nic Johnson (SHOOT, 8/4/00). Sitley had a hand in hiring Believe as a new media consultant for Fallon in the development of BMW Films.
Now Johnson heads up Beyond Belief’s branding and interactive work as its creative director. He has been working with online content for more than a decade, creating such fare for Disney, Intel and Discover Card, among others. For Believe Media, Johnson has designed and created Web sites and online content for record labels as well as for such brands as Starbucks, Nordstroms and Nikon. Plans call for Beyond Belief to tap into an extensive talent pool, with Sitley citing the many writers, designers, directors and advertising creatives he, Thornton and Silver have collaborated with over the years.
“With Mark on board we’re well suited to focus on the next model of advertising,” stated Thornton, whose Believe Media has produced programs for such brands as Cadillac, Nike, Coca-Cola and GMC. “He’s worked with the best agencies in the business and totally understands where marketers and agencies are headed in terms of creating new channels of content.”
Prior to Fallon, Sitley spent a decade working for a wide range of brands as a director of TV commercials (including via now defunct Sitley Parker Films), and as a freelance production consultant. At one point he headed production for talent agency CAA, Beverly Hills, in its early work for Coca-Cola International. Previously he served as director of broadcast production for Chiat/Day, New York (now TBWA/Chiat/Day). He began his career at DDB New York and later held positions at since closed agencies Edge Creative and Ally & Gargano.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More