Planning executive William Charnock has been appointed R/GA‘s chief strategy officer, a newly created role at the agency. He will be based in the New York office and report directly to Bob Greenberg, CEO and global chief creative officer.
Charnock will be responsible for overseeing R/GA’s global strategy across offices in the U.S., and London, as well as in future offices in Brazil and Singapore. He will also manage the strategy, planning, and research teams along with the international development of the strategic services group, and contribute to the development of thought leadership across the agency.
Previously, Charnock was at JWT New York as director of strategic innovation and co-head of strategic planning. In the latter role, he doubled the size of the department to over 40 planners and strategically transformed the structure, integrating communications planning, digital, and analytics into a single department. He was instrumental in helping JWT and WPP win pitches for HSBC, Samsung, Nokia, Dell, and Jet Blue and was responsible for ongoing strategic leadership for Domino’s, Merrill Lynch, Nokia, Cadbury, and Johnson & Johnson. Charnock sat on JWT’s worldwide planning council and was the architect of JWT’s Anxiety Index, an ongoing research study that tracks and measures global trends. As director of strategic innovation, Charnock led JWT’s experimentation with new revenue streams and venture capital/technology partnerships.
Prior to JWT, Charnock held director roles at FCB, New York, and BBDO New York. In both shops he spearheaded integration efforts.
Earlier in his career he was recruited from Ogilvy‘s London office to work as partner/planning director for the IBM account in New York. As a core member of the IBM team, he was integral to the development of IBM’s e-business strategy and advertising campaigns that aligned all 17 global business units around a single brand strategy.
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