Creative directors Mark Bernath and Eric Quennoy have been promoted to executive creative directors at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. The duo will replace Jeff Kling, who resigned from the agency last week.
As the creative force behind the recent Nike “Write the Future” campaign for Nike Football, the team of Bernath and Quennoy spearheaded a globally integrated effort that drew worldwide attention, including more than 40 million online views and over 1.9 billion impressions on Facebook to date. As a team, they have created notable and award-winning work, including the “Here I Am” campaign for Nike Women and the FIFA Street 3 project for EA Sports that produced one of the top viral videos of 2008.
An industry veteran with 13 years’ experience, Bernath joined W+K Amsterdam in 2007 as a creative director working on the Electronic Arts and Nike accounts. He came to W+K from Ogilvy & Mather in New York, where he was a group creative director and created the digital re-launch of Foster’s Lager that won the agency its first One Show Gold Pencil. He also spent time as a creative director at Publicis New York, where he worked on the Fujifilm campaign that won the agency its first Cannes Lion. A North Carolina native, he is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in the center of Amsterdam with his wife and their three boys.
“We’re ready to strap on our safety goggles and play with the most ridiculously fun science experiment in the network,” Bernath said. “When you combine such creative minds from such different cultural backgrounds, the explosion that results can be so inspiring. We’re hopeful that our time with the chemistry set will continue to yield some brave new ideas from the Amsterdam office, and one or two beautiful disasters.”
Born and raised in Australia, Quennoy has been at W+K Amsterdam since April 2006 as a creative director on the Electronic Arts, Heineken and Nike business. Before W+K he was a creative director at Publicis New York, where he created award-winning work for Heineken and Amstel Light, and helped win the TBS account. Prior to that he worked for D’Arcy & Partners in New York, where he was a senior copywriter for three years. He began his career in Melbourne, Australia, working as a copywriter for seven years. He lives in Amsterdam with his wife and their two boys.
“Mark and I are journeymen,” commented Quennoy. “We’ve worked in a bunch of different agencies in a lot of different cities, and we both feel like we found our spiritual home here in Amsterdam. The independent nature of W+K, the incredible roster of clients, against the backdrop of this wonderful city is a hard combination to beat. We’re just honored that Dan [Wieden, co-founder and global executive creative director] has handed us the keys.”
SUPERLATIVE Signs Director Claudia Abend For Spots and Branded Content
Latin American director/editor and documentary filmmaker Claudia Abend has joined SUPERLATIVE for her first U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded content.
Abend's empathetic docu-style POV has garnered several international awards for the documentary films Hit (2008) and The Flower of Life (2018). Her spotmaking credits include such brands as Procter & Gamble, Nestle and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. SUPERLATIVE has already worked with Abend, together producing a new ad campaign for digital agency Tinuiti and The Honest Company, a consumer goods corporation featuring eco-minded products.
“We found Claudia through her poignant documentaries on the festival circuit,” said SUPERLATIVE creative manager Stefan Dezil. “We are excited about her textured narratives, emotional storytelling, and her powerhouse long-form storytelling abilities, currently on her third feature film. As SUPERLATIVE continues to build our brand after premiering our latest films at Sundance and SXSW, Claudia is the kind of multidimensional artist we are excited to partner with on branded content and beyond. Fluent in English and Spanish, her reel shows real prowess with infants, food and skin products, families both young and old. Great visual storytelling and inspirational doc work.”
Abend began her career in her native Uruguay, studying film and editing in college. “My dad would show me films like Citizen Kane,” she said. “I love cinema and became an editor. It was here that I learned all about communicating human emotion.”
From the get-go, Abend hit it big as a documentary director, teaming with Adrianna Loeff on Hit, a movie chronicling pop artists of Uruguayan music. Abend took home a Best Editing... Read More