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.
Live Events Helped Netflix Score 19 Million More Subscribers In Holiday-Season Quarter
Netflix added nearly 19 million subscribers during the holiday-season quarter to help propel its earnings beyond analysts' projections, capping the video streaming service's best year yet in a sign that its expansion into live programming is paying off.
The numbers released Tuesday covered a October-December period highlighted by Netflix's streaming of a widely watched fight between YouTube sensation Jake Paul and former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson in addition to two National Football League games on Christmas Day. Those marquee events helped Netflix to easily surpass the 13 million subscribers that picked up in the same quarter during 2023.
Although Netflix's interest in live programming is primarily tied to its efforts to sell more commercials, it also appears to be giving current subscribers another reason to stick with the service while also reeling in more viewers to pay for the service. Netflix ended last year with more than 300 million worldwide subscribers, an increase of 41 million from 2023. That eclipsed its previous best year of growth during 2020 when its service added more 36.6 million subscribers amid pandemic lockdowns that kept people corralled at home and desperate for entertainment.
Forrester Research analyst Mike Proulx thinks live programming is quickly becoming Netflix's "secret ingredient" that is helping to widen its lead over its streaming rivals. "With more choice in programming than ever before, streaming services need to differentiate," Proulx said. "FOMO (fear of missing out) is a powerful tool in piquing interest and creating stickiness."
The October-December breakdown marked the last time Netflix plans to provide a quarterly count on its total subscribers as management tries to get investors to... Read More