W+K London

February 1, 2008

to be, or not to be

Culture

Currently in the window of our hanbury Street building: an exhibition of the work of Dominique Liquois. Dominique is French, and so is her website, but with the power of Babelfish, we can divine the folliwng information:

My pictorial practice is worked out in the Eighties following long
stays in Mexico and the United States.

The abstraction is essential immediately like the means of giving to
see bonds, diagrams and systems.

The drawings then paintings appear initially by simple forms but
strongly symbolic systems: ring, oval and Greek.

Then, little by little, the forms become more and more complex, cling
to modes of representation which borrow as well from the scientific
field, medical, with the microscopic reality, as in the world of the
toys, the animals, with mythologies, etc to let see moments of
reflexion around the alive one.

More and more, the use of fabrics bent on the fabric comes to disturb
"painting", adding additional dimensions to him: confrontation with
printed reasons and the materiality which volume allows.

Each painting or object is built around a topic which is clean for
him. The distance and the freedom which are necessary to develop these
topics leave a great place with humour.

January 31, 2008

new business league

News

The AAR published its annual new business league table today, looking at which UK agencies were most successful at winning new business in 2007. Nice (for us) to see that Wieden + Kennedy had a pitch conversion ration of around 80% for the third year running. But we’ve slipped from the number one spot we held for the last two years; the unfeasibly successful Fallon had a perfect conversion score of 100%. Meanwhile, AMV did an astonishing 17 pitches last year and even more amazingly managed to win 14 of them. All I can say, apart from ‘congratulations’, is that they must be absolutely knackered! A pitch every 3 weeks sounds like an insane workload. Hats off to them for somehow making it work. Next question: can an agency absorb 14 new clients within 12 months without it affecting quality control?
The scary thing is that the average number of pitches done by agencies with a conversion rate of below 50% is 10.7. Five unsuccessful pitches a year must be incredibly debilitating for any agency, emotionally and financially. No wonder agency senior staff seem to be dropping like flies round London at the moment.