Creatives Stuart Harricks and Siavosh Zabeti have joined Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. Harricks comes aboard as creative director after departing Young & Rubicam, New York, where he was global creative director for LG worldwide, LG US Mobile and the United States Olympic Committee alongside Andrew McKechnie.
Harricks’ notable work at Y&R included the lauded “Something’s Lurking” piece for LG, created with Psyop, New York. Prior to Y&R, Harricks was an integrated associate creative director at Modernista! in Boston where he helped integrate the agency’s above the line and digital creative across the Palm, Cadillac and National Parks Foundation accounts. Earlier Harricks was at Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore.
At W+K Amsterdam, Harricks will be partnered with creative director Edu Pou.
Zabeti is a young, up-and-coming talent who created a diverse body of work for DDB Paris, including: a billboard powered by oranges for Tropicana, a full-scale Wii video game for Henkel, a 15 minute interactive Anime for an anti-smoking campaign, and a book of Facebook memories for French mobile provider Bouygues.
During his four years at DDB, Zabeti’s work earned four Cannes Lions, a ONE Show Pencil, a pair of Webby awards, several Young Guns awards, and a couple of D&AD nominations.
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