Doug Speidel, formerly executive creative director of TEQUILA, the digital and direct-marketing unit of TBWAChiatDay in Los Angeles, has moved to New York to join digital agency MRM Worldwide as senior VP/creative director.
In his new capacity, Speidel is set to work on the Diageo business as MRM continues to add to its roster of brands from that client. He will also contribute to business development at the agency.
At TEQUILA, Speidel helped build the North American offices of the worldwide network, providing TBWACD with an integrated creative offering that gained plaudits in both digital and direct creative competitions.
Most notably under Speidel’s watch was Sony PlayStation’s landmark viral “Giantology” campaign that launched the Shadow of the Colossus game and won awards in interactive categories at D&AD, the One Show and Art Directors Club, as well as Best in Show in the Advertising Club of Los Angeles’ Beldings competition.
Before joining TEQUILA, Speidel spent four years as chief creative officer in the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco offices of Direct Partners where the accounts included DirecTV, E*Trade, Disney and Kmart.
From ’97 to ’98, he was executive creative director at Lowe Direct in New York working on the Mercedes Benz account for North America. From ’90 to ’97, he was a group creative director at Wunderman in New York, a division of Young & Rubicam, a year of which he spent as exec creative director of Wunderman in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Speidel is the latest significant creative hire at MRM Worldwide in N.Y. this year. The shop recruited Farid Chaouki, VP, director of innovation and experience design, and Roy Eventov, design director, from Israel, a hot-bed of digital talent. Cheryl Van Ooyen, who worked at Deutsch and BBDO Worldwide, creating highly recognized and awarded campaigns for Ikea, Snapple and VISA, joined MRM in April.
MRM’s suite of offerings includes, original content creation, digital strategy, cross-media analytics, search, technology strategy and website design. The agency network has 62 offices in 40 countries and counts Microsoft, Intel, MasterCard, Verizon, and General Motors among its clients.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More