Staff
Marc Lefton, Founder
Jeffrey Riman, Director of Operations
Jill Noyes, Awards Coordinator
Please direct all inquiries to jill (at) thespeckies.com
Judges
Arnie DiGeorge
Arnie DiGeorge is a Creative Director at R&R Partners. Arnie has over 20 years in advertising and has run the Las Vegas account which includes the "What happens here, stays here," campaign for the past 7 years. Aside from winning numerous industry awards his work has been featured nationally in
Adage, The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, Newsweek, One Show, Archive, U.S. Ad Review, Nightline, ABC, The View and others.
Dina Mande
Dina Mande is the founder of the innovative development program, Group101Spots, which has launched the careers over 70 new commercial directors. Mentored by the nation’s top ad agency creatives and shooting scripts from agencies across the country, each director shoots a new reel in six months. Over 500 spots have been produced in the program since Jan, 2003.
Dina, along with her partner, Steve Gould, is currently executive producer of Subliminal, a Los Angeles and New York based commercial production company. She has also just launched a new division, ShadowCorp, to represent writer/directors for interactive, viral and new media projects.
Also a director, several of her short films have run the festival circuit, including “Small Change” which played the Tribeca Film Festival and “A Dog Story” which played Toronto Film Festival. “Small Change” was also honored as a finalist for the More Magazine/Women in Film 2007 Director Award.
doug jaeger
http://dougjaeger.comthehappycorp global, founder,CEO
At age 13, Doug learned how to drive stick shift in a video arcade playing Hard Drivin Atari 1988 and his passion for interactive experiences, innovative technology, and graphic design was made apparent.
By age 25 doug had already established the digital creative departments for two of the most successful global marketing firms, JWalter Thompson and TBWA\Chiat\Day. During his time at the at these firms he oversaw award winning work for ABSOLUT VODKA, DeBeers Diamonds, Elizabeth Arden, Merrill Lynch, Orbitz.com, & A&E television.
During his career, Doug has been awarded at the industrys highest level. Since 2000, his projects have received merits from all the major industry award shows including the Cannes, ADC, the ONESHOW amongst others. He is a frequent industry speaker and has judged international and domestic award shows.
Doug moved on from the global agencies to start his own firm, thehappycorp global in late 2003. Since starting the firm, he has delivered an international design conference at Lincoln Center to over 1,300 spectators, has been appointed to the ADC as a board member, a member of the Digital Academy or Arts and Sciences, and a jury forman at D&AD london. This year his company has worked on assignments for Anheuser Busch, Mercedes AMG, Clinique, Miraval Resorts, Dewars, Brooklyn Brewery, and is active on a number of VC funded start-up brands.
Beyond his client service initiative thehappycorp started a private members club called lvhrd in 2004. It currently communicates to over 10,000 exceptional creative talents from New York via a monthly event series, a digital magazine, blog and video podcast series. lvhrd has collaborated with major art institutions and creative firms including MoMA, New York City Ballet, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Studio Red, JWT, the Onion, Refinery 29, Surface Magazine amongst others.
Gill Witt
A partner at Woods Witt Dealy & Sons in New York, Gill has helped build some of America’s best known brands.
As SVP Creative Director at BBDO New York, he headed up teams that positioned and launched the Pepsi One brand for Pepsico. He helped establish a new snack category with Tostitos Tortilla Chips and successfully challenged P&G giant Pringle’s with Lay’s Stax while repositioning existing brands Doritos and Lay’s Classic for Frito Lay.
In 2001, he created a campaign for KFC that shook up the fast food category and took the struggling brand to 12 straight months of sales increases and set same store sales records for 6 of those months.
Prior to BBDO, Gill worked at Backer NY where created noteworthy campaigns for Miller Genuine Draft, Joop Jeans, and New York’s Belmont Park. Earlier, he created award winning work for Reebok and American Express at Chiat Day, as well as Virgin Airlines at Korey Kay & Partners.
He started his career at New York’s Kirschenbaum and Bond working on the Kenneth Cole account.
Graduating from Portfolio Center Atlanta and SUNY Brockport, Gill’s list of industry honors include Cannes, Addy, and Clio awards. He was featured in Creativity Magazine as an Industry Young Gun (now older but much wiser). His work for Joop Jeans was featured on KTLA News in Los Angeles when it caused a furor among right wing fundamentalists.
Gill, wife Christina, daughter Julia and son James live in Manhattan’s Garment District among notion and button shops.
Harry Woods
A partner at Woods Witt Dealy & Sons in New York, Harry has created award-winning, brand-building advertising in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
As SVP Creative Director at BBDO NY, he headed up teams that positioned and launched the Pepsi One brand for PepsiCo. He helped establish a new snack category with Tostitos Tortilla Chips and successfully challenged P&G giant Pringle’s with Lay’s Stax while repositioning existing brands Doritos and Lay’s Classic for Frito Lay.
In 2001, he created a campaign for KFC that shook up the fast food category and took the struggling brand to 12 straight months of sales increases and set same store sales records for 6 of those months.
Prior to BBDO, Harry spent time at TBWA NY, where he created noteworthy campaigns for Evian Water, Carvel Ice Cream, KPMG, and Tott’s Champagne while also working on Absolute Vodka.
Earlier, he was recruited as Scali, McCabe Sloves’ first copywriter in their startup LA office, helping win the Altos Computer, Camp Beverly Hills Apparel, California Magazine and Yokohama Tire accounts. Harry began his career in Chicago at the MidWest office of BBDO, on accounts such as Channel 7 Eyewitness News and the Illinois State Lottery.
A graduate of University of Illinois, his list of industry honors includes One Show, CA, Addy, Andy, Belding, the MPA Kelly and International Film Festival awards. ABC’s Good Morning America named a spot he created for Carvel Ice Cream “The Funniest Christmas Commercial of all Time.”
Harry, wife Cynthia and sons William and Robert live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Woods and Witt opened Woods Witt & Sons in June, 2005.
Jim LeMaitre
Jim in a freelance copywriter living in New York. Previously he worked full
time at BBDO as writer/acd on FedEx. Before that, he worked at Wieden &
Kennedy NY on ESPN.Katie Dreke
Katie Dreke broke into advertising as a door-to-door GRIT newspaper sales girl who created her own outdoor transit campaigns affixed to her radio flyer. But it was on tour in 1987 as a back up singer with megastar Tiffany where Katie truly found her calling. In the malls across America Katie found herself drawn to cultural trend study by friendship bracelets, crimped hair and pegged jeans. How did these trends survive, even before the internet?
Post tour and back home in Seattle, Katie honed her skills and near immeasurable hotness at numerous notorious advertising agencies and marketing companies, but none as famous or historically significant as Wexley School for Girls. Now as director of the research and trend study and manipulation department at Wexley, she is molding young, unsuspecting minds for clients like Microsoft, Nike, Pepsi and Old Navy.
Michael Iva
Michael Iva, President / Creative Director of Qually & Company, Inc. and QuContent (Chicago), an internationally renowned New Product Launch Specialist, Designer, Writer, Part Time College Professor, Lecturer, and Marketing Expert who has helped to successfully position, reposition, or launch 128 new products and services and issues (more than any other 'individual' practitioner in the U.S.A.) into many different market places; generating countless billions in profitable sales for major corporations around the world. Iva generates new proprietary product concepts for QuContent, AND launches and sells the new product concepts of others through Qually & Company Inc. When it comes to successful new product development and introductions, "There are no maps, just guides."
If there were maps for success, every new product or service launch would be a success... well they're not. Eight out of 10 new ventures fail immediately. Of the two that survive, one will fail in the next three years. So the moral of the story is, "if you do not know where you need to go, many paths will take you there"; unless you are shown the way by a guide who has been there before. Iva is that guide. Iva is to new product development and launches what Obstetricians and Pediatricians are to prenatal and postnatal care of babies. New humans require the same specialized attention in the early stages of their life span, before and after their birth; that their new products and services also require.
Nick Cohen
After apprenticing as a tea boy/messenger for a year, Nick landed a job in London in the creative department of a small agency called Mavity Gilmore Jaume. He did pretty well, won a bunch of awards, then met an American girl, fell hopelessly in love, got married and moved to the States. After spending two years at TBWA/Chiat in New York, and then a year at Ogilvy NY running a collaborative creative group, in 1991 he had a sudden whim to start an ad agency with zero clients and a maxed out credit card and called it Mad Dogs & Englishmen. After 15 years of mischievous work, for everyone from MTV to The Economist, The Village Voice to the NFL, Banana Republic to Jamba Juice, Mad Dogs was finally euthanized. A year later, while in the neighborhood, Nick wandered in the doors of Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, to help out on some projects and...
Patrick Hanlon
Patrick Hanlon is founder and CEO of Thinktopia, Inc. and has been a marketing practitioner for over 20 years. His book Primal Branding: Create Zealots For Your Brand, Your Company And Your Future was named “Best Read 2006”. The book has been translated into Chinese and Korean and has been included as marketing curriculum at progressive universities including Berkeley and Johns Hopkins.
As a senior executive at advertising agencies like Ogilvy, TBWA, Hal Riney & Partners, Lowe & Partners and elsewhere, Hanlon worked on famous brands including Absolut, John Deere, Ford Motor Company, Montblanc, LEGO, UPS, Unilever and IBM. His work is included in Absolut Book, and he wrote the introduction to How To Succeed In Advertising When All You Have Is Talent.
He has been a guest speaker at the HP Brand Innovation Series, IDEO, GlobalShop 2007, Syracuse University, Institute for International Research, Polaroid, Toro Corporation, Best Buy, Brandworks University, Young & Rubicam, American Marketing Association, Direct Marketing Association Leadership Council, Outdoor Advertising Association of America, the University of Minnesota’s Strategic Branding
Program, Parsons School of Design, American Advertising Federation, and elsewhere.
He has also been a guest writer for ADWEEK, Advertising Age and his ads have been featured in The One Show, Communication Arts, Archive, and other leading publications. His 2003 Super Bowl spot for H&R Block with Willie Nelson was a Top 10 spot in consumer polls. He has been quoted in Inc. magazine, Business Week Online, Entrepreneur, Fast Company and elsewhere. Hanlon heads Thinktopia, an idea engineering company dedicated to building communities around brands. Clients have included Samsung, Barnes & Noble, Wrigley, Levi’s, Best Buy and others.
Steve Hall
Steve Hall publishes Adrants and he's done time in media, account management and new business at, among others, Leo Burnett, Starcom/Mediavest, BlackSheep Marketing, and Bozell, where he managed big ass marketing budgets for both consumer and business-to-business clients including Reebok, Sperry Topsider, Monster.com, Tyco, Marriott Hotels and Marshmallow Fluff.
Steve has written about and spoken for industry associations on topics such as the advertising's role in consumer-controlled media, the integration of public relations and advertising, the future convergence of media, and the decline of traditional media. He is co-founder of MarketingVOX, an online marketing publication, co-founder and publisher of the ad:tech industry trade show weblog and creator of the advertising social network AdGabber.
