David Christopher, chief marketing officer of AT&T Mobility, has been named chair of the board of directors of the Ad Council. He succeeds Laura Desmond, global CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group. Christopher will be board chair through June 2016 when he will be succeeded by David Kenny, chairman and CEO of The Weather Company.
“David Christopher is a thought leader in the communications industry, particularly in marketing and the ever-changing digital world,” said Lisa Sherman, president and CEO of the Ad Council.
Christopher joined the Ad Council board in 2010 and became a member of the executive committee in July 2011. Among his many contributions to the Ad Council, Christopher helped spearhead the 2012 New York anti-truancy PSA campaign, created in partnership with the Bloomberg administration. Targeting chronic absenteeism, the campaign was the largest ever city-wide effort to inform parents that students who routinely miss school are more likely to drop out and offered a wide range of resources to help parents keep their kids on track. The campaign received donated media through New York City and more than 40 percent of parents reported seeing the PSAs.
“Serving the Ad Council means a great deal to me because of the power it has to affect change on our most pressing social issues,” said Christopher. “With such a strong board and management team, I am confident we will continue the Ad Council’s tradition of outstanding work.”
Christopher has served as CMO for AT&T Mobility since 2004, and leads all marketing for AT&T’s 120M-plus customer wireless business. He is responsible for the company’s extensive portfolio of wireless products and services, including voice and data plans, smartphones, tablets, wearables and cloud products, as well as marketing and advertising for AT&T’s connected home platform, AT&T Digital Life, and the company’s prepaid brands, Cricket Wireless and GoPhone. Christopher also oversees the AT&T Developer Program and its more than 55,000 members, leading the team that determines and delivers the APIs, tools and training developers need to build new and innovative platforms. He is on the Facebook and Twitter client councils and is a member of the Marketing 50. In 2014, he was named to Forbes’ 50 Most Influential CMOs list.
With Christopher’s election, the Ad Council will continue its ongoing tradition of rotating board chairs every year between the organization’s founding sectors: media companies, advertising agencies and corporate advertisers.
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 โ a series of 10 plays โ 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