Agency appoints Simran Kaur as director of Innovation Camp
Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P) has hired Martin Pagh Ludvigsen as its director of creative technology and AI, and appointed Simran Kaur as brand strategy director and director of Innovation Camp.
“Our goal is to make technology a change maker in our clients’ businesses by taking them into emerging spaces of all kinds,” said Margaret Johnson, chief creative officer and partner at GS&P. “Simran and Martin break the mold of traditional agency disciplines by melding creative, strategy and technology to develop breakthrough ideas. We’re thrilled to be carving out these new roles to expand our innovation capabilities.”
Ludvigsen will establish an AI and emerging-technology strategy across all the agency’s disciplines. Prior to joining GS&P, he worked at ACNE Studios, BBH and MullenLowe, and started working with AI in 2011. Some of his most awarded projects include Nike Football’s “The Chain,” McDonald’s “Track My Maccas AR” and Acura’s “Beat That.”
Kaur built and leads Innovation Camp, the agency’s first strategic innovation offering that brings together a bespoke, cross-disciplinary team to build multiyear innovation road maps for brands. The camp’s sprint model helps clients demystify emerging spaces and go from white noise to white space. Since its inception, Innovation Camp has led to new work leveraging XR and AI and is now being scaled across the agency.
“Innovation Camp was a new way of working that sparked some original thinking of how to merge Lunchables and gaming together,” said Samantha Mills, director of portable snacks and beverages brand communications at Kraft Heinz.
Prior to joining GS&P, Kaur brought her multidisciplinary lens to award-winning projects, including “Go Back to Africa,” which won a D&AD Black Pencil and a Grand Prix Lion; “The Black Elevation Map,” which won a Gold Lion; “Act Too,” which won a Silver Lion; and “Trending 2 Table,” which won a Silver Lion.
“As we expand our offerings with GS&P Labs and Innovation Camp, we want leaders who can teach, create and guide us through innovation,” said Leslie Barrett, president and partner, GS&P. “We look forward to helping our clients leverage emerging tech to activate ideas and connect with their audiences in new ways that drive tangible business results.”
GS&P has a history of innovation. Through its in-house innovation lab, GS&P Labs, the agency created a number of campaigns that have leveraged emerging technology and AI over the past 18 months.
“GS&P’s long history of risk-taking innovation at the center of its creative process attracted me,” said Ludvigsen. “It’s rare to find an agency whose culture thrives on firsts, and I look forward to crafting the unexpected and redefining what’s possible with AI and creativity.”
In June GS&P appeared onstage at the Cannes Lions with OpenAI’s COO, Brad Lightcap, to discuss the future of creativity with ChatGPT and DALL•E. The presentation included a discussion about the Dalà Museum’s The Dream Tapestry, a first-of-its-kind interactive experience at the museum where visitors can turn their dreams into art. Additional AI projects have included BMW’s The Electric AI Canvas, which GS&P revealed at Art Basel in June. Featuring the BMW i5 as a canvas for generative art, the exhibition was a collaboration between GS&P and Gary Yeh. It featured custom AI-generated animations using models trained on a curated data set of contemporary artists’ works. And for the Smithsonian, GS&P created the Your Future Guide exhibit, which combined machine-learning, AI and voice-recognition technologies with personality research and hundreds of scripts (with all their variations) to create a tour of the FUTURES exhibition, guided by yourself from the year 2050.
Review: Director Morgan Neville’s “Piece by Piece”
A movie documentary that uses only Lego pieces might seem an unconventional choice. When that documentary is about renowned musician-producer Pharrell Williams, it's actually sort of on-brand.
"Piece by Piece" is a bright, clever song-filled biopic that pretends it's a behind-the-scenes documentary using small plastic bricks, angles and curves to celebrate an artist known for his quirky soul. It is deep and surreal and often adorable. Is it high concept or low? Like Williams, it's a bit of both.
Director Morgan Neville — who has gotten more and more experimental exploring other celebrity lives like Fred Rogers in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?,""Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain" and "Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces" — this time uses real interviews but masks them under little Lego figurines with animated faces. Call this one a documentary in a million pieces.
The filmmakers try to explain their device — "What if nothing is real? What if life is like a Lego set?" Williams says at the beginning — but it's very tenuous. Just submit and enjoy the ride of a poor kid from Virginia Beach, Virginia, who rose to dominate music and become a creative director at Louis Vuitton.
Williams, by his own admission, is a little detached, a little odd. Music triggers colors in his brain — he has synesthesia, beautifully portrayed here — and it's his forward-looking musical brain that will make him a star, first as part of the producing team The Neptunes and then as an in-demand solo producer and songwriter.
There are highs and lows and then highs again. A verse Williams wrote for "Rump Shaker" by Wreckx-N-Effect when he was making a living selling beats would lead to superstars demanding to work with him and partner... Read More