Two key management changes–one which already has taken hold, the other slated for January–have been announced by BBDO San Francisco. First, Jim Lesser has been promoted from executive creative director to chairman of BBDO S.F. And effective next month Mike McKay joins the agency as executive creative director. McKay comes over from Saatchi & Saatchi LA where he’s been executive creative director since 2008.
Both McKay and Lesser will partner with Brent Smart, managing director, and Nick Bartle, director of behavioral planning, to form BBDO San Francisco’s new executive management team.
At Saatchi, McKay worked on notable campaigns for clients such as Toyota and The Surfrider Foundation. Prior to that, he was a creative director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, from 2000 to 2008. McKay’s diverse portfolio includes work on such blue-chip brands as Apple, Netflix, Sony PlayStation, Comcast, HP, Budweiser, Haagen-Dazs and Nissan. At Goodby he had a creative hand in HP’s “The Computer Is Personal Again” campaign as well as the lauded Comcast “Rabbit” spot.
Lesser is a 19-year veteran of the advertising industry and has been with BBDO for the past 10 years, starting as an associate creative director and rising to his current role. Under his leadership, the creative department has more than tripled in size. He has personally worked on all of the agency’s accounts, even as it has added more than a dozen new clients and assignments and grown significantly in scope. Lesser began his career at the legendary Scali McCabe Sloves in New York.
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