R/GA has secured executive creative directors Mark Shewmaker and Robert Smiley for its San Francisco office. The duo will co-lead the shop’s creative vision around strategic brand storytelling and transformative digital platforms while reporting to New York-based Nick Law, executive VP/chief creative officer, North America.
This co-creative leadership in San Francisco follows a model currently in place in R/GA’s New York and Chicago offices, which allows for a truly balanced approach to the work. The agency looks to implement this model across the entire R/GA network.
Shewmaker, who comes from the interactive design discipline, has led and created an impressive body of work during his 15-year career, the last eight of which have been with R/GA. Shewmaker has been part of numerous award-winning campaigns, most notably Verizon’s “DROID Does Times Square,” which utilized giant digital billboards in Times Square to highlight location-based search in real time. He has led the interaction design effort for Verizon and Verizon Wireless digital commerce, marketing and product design initiatives at R/GA. Throughout his R/GA tenure, he has worked with clients such as L’Oreal Paris, Lowe’s, Walmart, IBM, and Merck. Prior to joining R/GA, Mark spent eight years at Monster Worldwide, where he helped create and lead the interaction design department.
Smiley brings to R/GA nearly 25 years of experience on the agency and client side in art direction. Smiley has received numerous industry awards over the course of his career, including a Cannes Lion for Game Show Network’s “You Know You Know” campaign, a series of humorous TV spots generating awareness around GSN’s quiz shows. He comes over from Apple where he helped develop and implement its educational marketing strategy that affected everything from product launches to the website. Previously, he served as worldwide creative director for Absolut and group creative director at TBWAChiatDay, New York.
Smiley also helped launch the Chiat San Francisco office, where he worked on brands such as Levi’s, Game Show Network, and was the creative director behind the iconic Pets.com Sock Puppet. Smiley’s early work in San Francisco includes a key role in designing the very first retail concept store for Apple, which was to become the internationally successful Apple Store.
R/GA’s San Francisco office continues to expand its client roster and personnel, including an increase across the creative, client services, and production teams. The office follows R/GA’s unique agency model, which promotes multi-disciplinary teams that include planners, developers, visual designers, copywriters, producers and interaction designers working closely together toward one common goal. The S.F. office provides digital marketing solutions to a diverse client portfolio ranging from consumer-packaged goods to sports apparel to technology companies.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More