R/GA has named Kim Laama as its VP, executive creative director after a short sabbatical from her role as group ECD at R/GA New York. Laama will lead a growing team of designers and creative technologists to strengthen the product and service design capability with a focus on the office’s future-facing commerce and activation expertise. She’ll also work closely with SVP, managing director Tara Moss to drive innovation and growth for current client partners Nike, McDonald’s, MasterClass, and The British Columbia Automobile Association (BCAA).
“We’re thrilled to have Kim return to R/GA helming our creative practice in Portland, where we’ve done some of our most notable work with adventurous brands like Nike and McDonald’s,” said Tiffany Rolfe, R/GA global chief creative officer.
Ben Williams, R/GA chief experience officer, added, “Kim is an exceptional creative who understands how to create relationships between people and brands through thoughtful and innovative experience design.”
Laama returns to R/GA after a one-year sabbatical. Previously, she was part of the creative leadership team overseeing Samsung, Equinox and Johnson & Johnson, among others, at R/GA New York. Laama was pivotal in leading key projects, while establishing and fostering an experience and design focused creative team. Prior to R/GA, Laama led brand experience initiatives at AKQA while growing talent and building diverse, inspired, and collaborative teams. In her tenure at AKQA, Laama established and grew the company’s product design practices in San Francisco and New York, co-created New York’s D&I program and led creative work for Audi, Nike, Soho House, Verizon, Volvo, and Xbox.
R/GA Portland’s recent work collaborations include Nike’s sixth season of its PLAYlist episodic series, as well as the brand’s Game Growers series, both of which were geared at kids and the benefit of making sport a daily habit. The office also drove the design innovation build for McDonald’s corporate digital ecosystem.
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