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.
Writers of “Conclave,” “Say Nothing” Win Scripter Awards
The authors and screenwriters behind the film โConclaveโ and the series โSay Nothingโ won the 37th-annual USC Libraries Scripter Awards during a black-tie ceremony at USCโs Town and Gown ballroom on Saturday evening (2/22).
The Scripter Awards recognize the yearโs most accomplished adaptations of the written word for the screen, including both feature-length films and episodic series.
Novelist Robert Harris and screenwriter Peter Straughan took home the award for โConclave.โ
In accepting the award, Straughan said, โAdaptation is a really strange process, youโre very much the servant of two masters. In a way itโs an act of betrayal of one master for the other.โ He joked that โYou start off with a book that you love, you read it again and again, and then you end up throwing it over your shoulder,โ crediting author Robert Harris for being โso kind, so generous, so open throughout.โ
In the episodic series category, Joshua Zetumer and Patrick Radden Keefe won for the episode โThe People in the Dirtโ from the limited series โSay Nothing,โ which Zetumer adapted from Keefeโs nonfiction book about the Troubles in Ireland.
Zetumer referenced this yearโs extraordinary group of Scripter finalists, saying โprojects like these reminded me of why I wanted to become a writer when I was sitting in USCโs Leavey Library dreaming of becoming a screenwriter. If you fell in love with movies, or fell in love with TV, chances are you fell in love with something dangerous.โ
Special guest for the evening, actress and producer Jennifer Beals, shared her thoughts on the impact of libraries. โIf ever you are at a loss wondering if there is good in the world,โ she said, โyou have only to go to a... Read More