People on the Move

Serviceplan Group has appointed Dimitri Guerassimov and Fabien Teichner as partners and joint chief creative officers of Serviceplan France. After many years at Marcel Agency where they contributed to making it the most awarded French ad shop at the Cannes Lions in both 2015 and 2016, Guerassimov and Teichner now embark on a new entrepreneurial and creative adventure at Serviceplan France, alongside its president Alain Roussel.

The creatives have worked with some of the biggest national and international brands including; Intermarché, Orange, RayBan, Diesel, Instagram, DS Automobiles, Volkswagen, Fiat, Brandt, GQ and National Geographic. Between them Guerassimov and Teichner have amassed more than 500 international creative awards, including the only two D&AD Black Pencils in the history of French advertising. They are now poised to take the French arm of Serviceplan to creative heights on par with the multi-award winning Serviceplan Germany.

The Serviceplan Group is the largest independent agency group in Europe. Founded in 1970 in Munich as a traditional advertising agency, Serviceplan today has more than 3,400 employees and offices in 36 locations worldwide.

Odysseus Arms has added three artisans to its creative team: art directors Luisa Betancourt and Jarrod Gustin, and copywriter Clémence Pluche.

Betancourt joins Odysseus Arms from Eleven, where she was art director/designer for the past year, and junior designer before that, working with clients including Apple, Oakley, Dignity Health and the 3% Conference. Originally from Venezuela, Betancourt speaks English, Spanish and French. She studied at Miami Dade before earning a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from Academy of Art University. 

Gustin relocates to San Francisco from Minneapolis, where he was most recently art director for independent agency Solve for nearly two years. During his tenure, Gustin worked with brands including GMC, American Standard and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. He cut his teeth in the ad world at Victors & Spoils after spending time in London working in fashion PR. 

Pluche arrives from Eleven, where she was copywriter for the past year and a half, working with clients including Google, Oakley, Columbus Meats, Dignity Health and Julep. Previously, she was art director for Off The Cuff Magazine, Boston University’s fashion and art publication. Pluche is a French national from the Bordeaux region, who earned a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Boston University.

Editor Christopher Huth has joined the staff of Union Editorial. Known for affecting stories that span the spectrum of human emotion, Huth edited 2016 Cannes Direct Gold Lion-winner Pantene “DadDo” via Grey (directed by Pam Thomas), and “Dear Sophie” (directed by Henry & Rel), one of three Google Chrome spots from BBH and Google Creative Labs that collectively earned AICP Best in Show distinction for Advertising Excellence/Campaign in 2012. Huth recently completed anthem spots for Tempurpedic (via Hill Holliday, directed by Josh Taft) and USPS (via McCann, directed by Henry-Alex Rubin), as well as a short film for Chicco (via Mullen, directed by John X. Carey). Huth comes over from WAX, having begun his career at Lost Planet.

Graduating in 2006 with a BA from the University of Michigan’s Department of Screen Arts and Cultures, Huth began his studies as a chemistry major. “I hated sitting in dark rooms, so I abandoned the lab for the edit bay,” he joked. In fact, Huth’s path would lead him through other creative pursuits before taking his seat in the bay: he spent a year as a house fellow at Villa Guicciardini in Florence, Italy, and another year as resident curator at UnionDocs in Brooklyn, NY. Huth honed his craft at Lost Planet under Hank Corwin. Among Huth’s first opportunities was the aforementioned “Dear Sophie.” Another Google piece, “Demo Slam,” directed by Tim Abshire via Johannes Leonardo, won a Gold Lion for Film at Cannes, as well as Gold and Silver Clios, in 2011. Huth counts AT&T’s “It’s not Complicated” (BBDO, Jorma Taccone, dir.) and HoneyMaid’s “Anthem” (Droga5, Martin+Lindsay, dirs.) among his favorite historical projects, and works frequently with directors Lisa Rubisch and David Frankham. In 2014, Huth edited VISA’s Olympics entry, “Faces”, via BBDO and directed by Sweetgrass.

“Every job is a puzzle,” said Huth. “To solve each one requires just the right mixture of technique, team and usually blind luck. The first two, anyway, Union has in spades.” He added, “Union has built a fantastic team ready to take on the creative and technical challenges that the industry loves to throw our way as it reinvents itself every six months. There are no more offline edits anymore--design and visual effects can play as big a role in spots as music does--and Union’s graphics team is unrivaled.”  

Union is presided over by partner/managing director Michael Raimondi and partner/executive producer Caryn Maclean. The Union roster is comprised of partner/editors Jim Haygood, Einar, Jay Friedkin, Sloane Klevin, Marco Perez, and editors Huth, Nico Alba, Jinx Godfrey, Nicholas Wayman-Harris, Rachael Waxler, Daniel Luna, Jason Lucas, Paul Plew, Ben Longland, Laura Milstein, Eric Argiro, Karen Kourtessis, Zach Kashkett and Andrew Doga, as well as select projects with Tim Thornton Allen and Phil Hignett.

Union Editorial has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Austin, and London, where it maintains an alliance with Marshall Street Editors. The company also develops and produces original content, in partnership with Killer Content companies through its Union Entertainment Group banner. Other Union companies include Platform, a creative and advertising solution for the gaming industry; and Resolution, a visual effects boutique specializing in commercials, features and gaming.

Zoic Studios has promoted Emmy-nominated VFX supervisor Jeffrey Baksinski to creative director. Baksinski has over 30 years of experience in postproduction working in film and video editing, set supervision, and visual effects. With continued series growth across all three Zoic offices, the promotion will allow Baksinski greater creative oversight alongside partners Chris Jones and Andrew Orloff. His wealth of experience includes working on such films as Fifth Element, Titanic, X-Men 2 and virtual production design on Avatar. Joining Zoic in 2011, Baksinski has VFX supervisor has such recent credits as The Get Down, Hand of God, Timeless, Blindspot, The Exorcist, Blacklist, Castle and Six, as well as a DFX role on The Grey, Killing Kennedy, Gangster Squad and Lawless. He earned a 2016 Emmy nomination for his work on the pilot of Amazon’s original series The Man in the High Castle.

“Jeff is one of those rare few that can be counted on in every way a company like ours might require, be it creative leadership, project strategy or business acumen,” noted Zoic executive creative director/co-founder Chris Jones.  

Added Baksinski, “The modern audience has developed a pretty good eye, demanding higher quality, unique visual effects from their television shows. I’m extremely lucky to be working with Chris and Andrew through this transition in our industry as they’ve built a long-standing reputation for high volume, high quality work. With our top notch supervisors and crew, we’re going to continue to push the boundaries of television effects.”

Los Angeles-based Baksinski got his start in visual effects at Digital Domain, later moving on to help to build Cinesite Hollywood. Following that, he went on to launch his own visual effects company Furious FX. He later contributed to the first full Virtual Production technology for Avatar, then returned to Digital Domain as the “director of Digital Studio,” running the features department and artists. Most recently, Baksinski was a technical designer and implemented the Stereo Conversion pipeline at Prime Focus before joining Zoic.