And Now, an Atmosphere Update from its Own Chief Exec

By Kiran Aditham 

Over the weekend, we obtained what those in the know say is a legit memo from Andreas Combuechen, chairman/CEO/CCO of Atmosphere Proximity who co-founded the agency as part of Omnicom/BDDO Worldwide nearly 15 years ago.

Combuechen’s state of the union to staff perhaps most notably mentions a consolidation next year of Atmosphere’s creative technology, project management and production teams under one unit to be led by chief creative technologist/executive director of integrated production, Michael Moroney, who’s been with the agency for approximately 18 months. Along with Combuechen’s memo, sources tell us that come 2014, specifically in mid-January, New York-based Atmosphere, which also helps spearhead The Big Ad Gig, is launching new Visa work around Sochi (we’ve been told that the agency was also behind this recent effort for the brand). Anyhow, read on.

“All,

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Concepting and producing  brilliant creative is the lifeblood of our agency success.  And getting to brilliant work requires a highly collaborative environment and contributions from every team member within every department in the agency.

In 2013, we have wide ranging creative product to be proud of.  We developed a breakthrough brand campaign for Cognizant.   We’ve developed a cutting edge  experience for Visa through an app to allow you to experience the athlete perspective in a  360 interactive way.   We developed an innovative HP social media product idea called Inkable.  We re-architected and re-built the Johnson & Johnson DepuySynthes global web platform and digital ecosystem.  We also won new business on the back of great creative thinking for Emirates North America and the Dubai Tourism and Commerce Marketing Group.

While we can be proud of our accomplishments, we have to challenge ourselves to do better.

The first step to better was taken this past year when we introduced Michael Moroney and the Creative Technology group into the agency. This group of people have had a very positive effect on the work –  expanding the quality of creative thinking, prototyping ideas and identifying interesting technologies to use in production.

Because the type of work we’re developing includes more video, mobile applications, live event technology and web/social platforms, we are now producing integrated creative that requires the creative technology, project management and production teams to be coordinated and led in a new way.

To that end, in 2014 we are going to consolidate the current team of experts in creative technology, project management and production under a single group led by Michael Moroney.  Michael will spearhead these efforts and take on the title of Executive Director, Integrated Production.  Susanna Graves, will play a pivotal role guiding the project management team within the group and will take on the title of Director of Project Management.  In addition David Quinta will take a lead role for the Production team within, taking on the new title of Executive Producer of Integrated Production.

In another change relative to this move, we’d like to inform everyone that Ali Pulver will be moving on to a great new opportunity within Omnicom.  She is taking on the position of VP Commercial Operations at DAS as of January 1st. We’d like to thank Ali for all her contributions over the last couple of years to help scale the agency and wish her the best of luck.

We believe the new structure outlined above will lead to a more agile way of deploying expert resources on given assignments, enable better knowledge sharing and lead to an even higher caliber of collaboration.  As an end result we also believe the quality of creative work will be lifted.

There will be further dialogue about how this group will be operationalized next year.  In the meantime we’re excited about the potential it will bring.

Best,
Andreas Combuechen
CEO, Atmosphere”

 

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