MRM Worldwide has hired agency veteran Cheryl Van Ooyen in its N.Y. office as VP, group creative director. The copywriter has worked on notable campaigns for the likes of Snapple, Ikea and Visa, and enhances MRM’s brand storytelling capabilities. Along the way her work has garnered such honors as Cannes Lions and recognition from The One Show, the Clios and ADDYs.
At MRM Worldwide, she is helping to develop marketing strategies and measurable brand experiences for the shop’s clients, which include Betty Crocker, Bertolli, MasterCard, Intel, and Diageo brands Crown Royal and Captain Morgan.
For the past three years, Van Ooyen has been–and she continues to be–a contributor (content creation, writing, producing and directing) to MTV Networks/VH1 and NBC Universal. At the former, she created mobile and online series including Celebhead, the most streamed show on any MTV network, and wrote, directed and produced a full-length pilot for VH1 entitled Star Stories, an adaptation of a British comedy. At NBC Universal, she created and wrote a half-hour comedy pilot called The Two Hottest Girls from Wisconsin.
In the advertising industry, Van Ooyen has held various senior creative roles at agencies such as, kirshenbaum bond + partners, Deutsch and BBDO.
At Deutsch N.Y. from 1997 to ’03, her work on Snapple’s “Little Fruit” campaign depicted fruit in offbeat, but humanized situations–“bad fruit” loitered on the street and smoked cigarettes and was therefore unacceptable for Snapple to use because as the tagline declared, “The best stuff is in here.”
Van Ooyen, who was senior VP, group creative director by the time she left Deutsch in ’03, was also a key leader in redefining the brand strategy and image of Swedish furniture chain Ikea, whose “Live better” campaign included TV spots in which Ikea furniture added some panache to recreated sets from The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island, carrying the theme line, “If Ikea can update this classic, imagine the possibilities for your home.” She supervised the creative campaigns which included print, radio, online, and in-store and directed several of the commercials.
A guerilla campaign for Ikea had her creative teams placing the retailers’ chairs, sofas and cushions in public places such as bus stops and subways as a way to make them more comfortable and get people to directly experience the products.
After Deutsch, Van Ooyen joined BBDO Worldwide in New York as a creative director on the Visa account, supervising agency teams that worked on all of Visa’s platforms and partnerships including, the NFL, the Olympics, Disney, and all brand cards. She also worked on the Long John Silver and Pepsi accounts.
Early in her career, she was an associate creative director at Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, New York, and a senior writer at Elgyn-Syferd, Seattle.
“Joining MRM right now was an easy decision–and a great creative opportunity,” said Van Ooyen. “They are completely committed to taking brands to the next level in the digital space. And using my experience to create content that’s relevant for those brands makes it a perfect fit.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More