Kate Baynham and Hanna Wittmark have been promoted from associate creative directors to creative directors at Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P). Baynham and Wittmark have worked at GS&) for eight years on brands such as Comcast, Common Sense Media, Frito-Lay, Adobe, Chrysler, Nintendo and the Ad Council and helped the agency land two of its biggest accounts, Pepsi and Liberty Mutual.
“If you put Atlanta and Stockholm in a blender, you’d get their essence: a little dark, extremely irreverent and fearless, with this Scandinavian/Southern work ethic that makes for an unstoppable combination. Even though they’re from two very different parts of the world, they totally get each other,” said Margaret Johnson, chief creative officer at GS&P. “Their work transcends media. From creating the first emoji for a social cause to getting people to put down their mobile devices at the dinner table, their work is always rooted in humanity.”
Most recently, the pair created “Life Below Water” with YouTube, Google, Tribeca Enterprises and the United Nations. The underwater film, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is raising awareness about the fact that plastic will outnumber fish in the ocean by 2050. Of all the campaigns created to highlight the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, Life Below Water ranked number 1 in lifting people’s consideration to take action and solve the issue.
For the Ad Council, Baynham and Wittmark created the first official emoji tied to a social cause that lives on every phone in the world, providing kids with a tool to combat cyberbullying. The campaign not only brought together all of Silicon Valley but also garnered the attention of national news outlets such as WIRED, TechCrunch, the Washington Post, NPR and BuzzFeed and received a Gold and two Silver Cannes Lions awards.
Baynham and Wittmark’s passion for comedy and altruism came together a few years ago in the form of a series of public-service announcements for media think tank Common Sense Media’s #DeviceFreeDinner initiative. In perhaps their most difficult writing challenge to date, they had to create a series of scripts that made not only Jeff Goodby but also Will Ferrell laugh. The PSAs were praised in publications such as Esquire; featured on TODAY, the popular morning talk show; and went “Immortal” on Funny or Die.
The duo also has created work for Adobe’s “Do You Know What Your Marketing Is Doing?” campaign, producing spots showing everything from illicit social-clout dealings in “Mean Streets” to a failure to launch by way of data in “The Launch.”
Baynham and Wittmark were named Next Creative Leaders by the One Club and the 3% Movement—the first female team to do so. Their work has been awarded by festivals such as the Cannes Lions, Design and Art Direction, the Effie Awards, the Art Directors Club and the One Show.
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