Creative partners Scott Vitrone and Ian Reichenthal are set to join Wieden+Kennedy‘s New York leadership team as executive creative directors. They will work alongside managing director Neal Arthur. The move marks a return home for Vitrone and Reichenthal who began their first tour of duty at W+K back in 1999, collaborating as a duo for the first time and working on Nike. They now fill the void at W+K N.Y. created by the recent departure of executive creative directors Kevin Proudfoot and Jerome Austria, with Proudfoot landing at Google Creative lab as a co-executive creative director.
Vitrone commented, “When we accepted the job, Dan [Wieden, agency co-founder and global executive creative director] said, ‘Welcome home.’ And that’s exactly how we feel, too. To come back to W+K, 11 years after meeting there and first working together, is really special for us.”
W+K global executive interactive creative director Iain Tait noted that meanwhile the search continues for “an interactive creative director to be a part of the evolved creative leadership of the New York office.”
Vitrone and Reichenthal come back to W+K from Young & Rubicam, New York, where they have led the office’s creative resurgence as co-chief creative officers since 2008. Prior to that, they were group creative directors at TBWAChiatDay, New York, working on the Mars’ brands, including Skittles, Combos and Snickers.
W+K N.Y. works with a growing roster of clients including ESPN, Delta Air Lines, Nike, Jordan Brand, and ABC Television Networks.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More