Creative entrepreneur and ad agency veteran Keith Cartwright, a co-founder of SATURDAY MORNING, has launched CARTWRIGHT, a shop designed to work with brands who want a more direct relationship with agency leadership to realize creative product that stands out in the marketplace.
Among the marketers that CARTWRIGHT is already working with are P&G, Facebook and LVMH Brand Loro Piana. The start-up is also in talks with several undisclosed clients.
The new model agency has backing from WPP and will work in partnership with global creative network, Grey Group. Based in Venice, Calif., CARTWRIGHT will tap into Grey’s international network of talent and resources to provide fully integrated and curated capabilities to clients around the world.
“My goal in structuring our agency this way allows us to maintain the highest level of client interaction and partnership while giving us the ability to pull unlimited resources and scale globally as needed,” said Cartwright.
A former 72andSunny executive creative director, Cartwright has experience building his own successful agency, having launched Union Made Creative in 2012 working with Nike, Lego, G&E and others before being acquired by BSSP in 2016, where he became an ECD. Prior to Union, Cartwright was SVP, group creative director at The Martin Agency, and global creative director at Wieden+Kennedy where he led the Jordan Brand, Nike Canada and Nike New York.
“If there’s one consistent theme today amongst our clients, it’s that they want new models that provide supreme flexibility relative to how they work, and the closer they get to the actual creative minds the better. CARTWRIGHT is another example of how putting creative leaders at the top delivers on what matters most to clients,” said Michael Houston, worldwide CEO, Grey Group.
Cartwright will also continue as co-founder of SATURDAY MORNING, a non-profit creative collective founded by ad executives in 2016 who came together to create ideas that bring awareness to and shift perceptions on racial bias, and injustice. Since its inception, SATURDAY MORNING has worked with Spotify, Twitter and P&G. Their most recent effort for P&G, “The Look,” debuted last year in Cannes to critical acclaim.
“Advertising hasn’t lost its way or become irrelevant. In fact, our business is now more important and necessary than ever before. We take in more information in a day than our parents did in a lifetime. People aren’t sitting around waiting on your ad to come out. This requires a different type of creativity,” Cartwright said. “Creativity has to be bold and audacious in order for you to pay attention, inspire you to share and entice you to want more.”
