Sweet Rickey, a female-run production company, has opened in Boston with quarters located beneath sister editorial shop EDITBAR on historic Union Street. The new venture is headed by Vanessa Macedo Lonborg, a former broadcast producer at agency Hill Holliday, Boston. Phoebe Cole and Scott Burtnett serve as executive producers at Sweet Rickey. Cole is an ex-sr. producer at Arnold Worldwide, Boston, while Burtnett was a sr. producer at Element Productions, Boston.
Sweet Rickey’s directorial roster includes Marc Colucci, DeMane Davis, Max Esposito, Max Gutierrez and Brett Karley. Colucci and Davis were both with Element Productions. Esposito, Gutierrez and Karley were freelancing prior to coming aboard Sweet Rickey. The lineup of directors has fluency across all media platforms, equally at home turning out experiential content as well as traditional broadcast TV advertising.
“Sweet Rickey was designed to be a fresh force for inspiring work,” said Lonborg. “The mission here is equal parts creativity and open client communication–transparency to foster seamless execution from treatment through delivery.”
Central to the Sweet Rickey community are planned events and screenings to bring people together to explore creativity in various forms and expressions. “Our industry is notorious for ingenuity and artistry but we need opportunities to step outside of our daily roles and appreciate it,” added Lonborg. “Our goal is to keep fires burning and spark imagination.”
Also in the Sweet Rickey/EDITBAR family are color and finishing crafters via remote collaboration with Nice Shoes and artist-owned audio house Sound Lounge. Now, with Sweet Rickey, production and postproduction assistance will be offered under one roof. Services may be packaged to provide agility, consistency, and above all, artistry for any approach.
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