Email from Dan Wieden last night:

Wieden + Kennedy, as you may know, has five partners.
 
They are Dan Wieden, Dave Luhr, Susan Hoffman, Bill Davenport and John Jay.
 
(Not necessarily in order of importance.)
 
Wieden + Kennedy has not added a  partner for nearly 13 years.
 
We are aware that 13 years is a long time.
 
We are also aware 13 is an auspicious number.
 
So….drum roll….we are pleased to announce not one, but TWO NEW PARTNERS.
 
They are Tony Davidson!!
 
And Kim Papworth!!

 
I know, I know it is pretty damn amazing
 
A press release is this minute being sent around the world.
 
It carries this quote:
 
"If you want to be a partner at W+K, you've got to be some kind of saint and some kind of crazy," said Dan Wieden, CEO. "No one exemplifies that more profoundly Tony and Kim. They have raised the bar, broken rules, lifted hearts and shocked the world. There is no office, anywhere, more loved and respected than W+K London."

The news is covered in The Guardian today here.

You may know that last year we created the Music Almighty campaign for Nokia, and part of that involved a Headset Design Competition.

The
aim of the competition was simple: get as many people around the world
designing their perfect Nokia Bluetooth headset inspired by their favourite piece of music. And in return we will make that design into a fully functioning headset that you can keep forever.

The
competition attracted interest from both serious designers and novices
alike, with designers able to download a template and use any tool at their disposal to create their design, or simply use tools from our provided style palette to get creative.

We managed to engage
bloggers all over the world and drive them to the site resulting in thousands of entries.

Luckily
for us, we had managed to secure a panel of expert judges with roots in
music and design to give us a helping hand to pick the lucky five
winning designs.

Last weekend we flew the winning designers in from as far afield as Sao
Paulo and as close by as Essex (well, they didn't fly from Essex) to help put the finishing touches to
their headsets. We spent a fun-filled few days with them in London
before finally revealing the final product to them over a breakfast at
W&K. A really interesting industrial designer from Nokia also
popped by to check out the designs and give us a snapshot into his day
to day job.

Luckily
we get to keep the headsets in the office for a few weeks before the Regent Street
Flagship store snaps them up.