JWT’S CHICAGO OFFICE is on the brink of extinction after the loss of $180 million worth of Kraft business, an account this office has held for 70 years.
Not so, insists New York-based president Bob Jeffrey. The agency that was once Chicago’s biggest and brightest will remain open.
“We are committed to Chicago,” Jeffrey reassured the troops right before he relieved the two top executives of their duties.
President Ros King, the expert who managed the Kraft business for JWT, will leave within a month and return to the London office.
EVP/ECD Graham Woodall, who once called JWT “a little agency with a big future,” leaves within two weeks.
After the two positions are filled, possibly with local executives, the New York office will manage the Chicago branch, or what’s left of it. A few weeks ago a quarter of the staff was fired.
With the loss of many high profile, big-budget accounts in the space of just two years, Chicago’s aggregate ad business has shrunk from $17 billion to $15 billion.
I CUBED PRODUCTIONS, “a new type of integrated production and post company,” is up and running in its new 4,000-sq. ft. studio at 11 W. Illinois, reports owner/director Arturo Cubacub.
Working with the creative editor and special effects artist are executive producer/writer Courtney Shumway, creative Sarah Weis and apprentice Ryan Gilbert.
Arturo adds that his new company has no connection with the 10-year old I Cubed owned and operated by Arturo and former partner Mark Adler. New phone number is 312/464-0911.
ROBERT TOWNSEND returns to Chicago to direct part of “Queen Dinah” here, a music biopic based on the tragic life of Dinah Washington, starring Deborah Cox. Townsend was here earlier filming “Of Boys and Men.”
SAG, AFTRA and the ad industry, after a 10 month search hired consultants Booz Allen Hamilton to research alternative means of compensating actors and performers on commercials distributed over new and old media platforms.
Research is expected to be completed by the end of October. That gives unions and advertisers a year to consider how to incorporate recommendation into a new commercial contract. The current contract expires Oct. 28, 2008.
VOICEOVER PAT DUKE can be heard as narrator for a new Friday night CMT comedy series. “Frankville” that puts a country twist on good-natured, practical jokes seen only by CMT’s hidden cameras — “a combination of ?Candid Camera’ and ?Punk’d’ done southern style,” he says.
Duke comments on the actors’ stunts as they set up elaborate pranks on their unsuspecting marks.
LOOKING AHEAD. The Oak Park International Film Festival will be held Sept. 22-23. Columbia College Chicago’s Critical Encounters Film Series on Poverty and Privilege. Columbia is the festival’s co-sponsor, along with Downtown Oak Park, the Oak Park Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Oak Park Public Library.
NEW YORK’S FILM OFFICE celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, to be commemorated, among other celebrations, with a keepsake book. “Scenes from the City: Filmmaking in New York 1966-2006,” published by Rizzoli, features 250 color and B&W images, including rare and unusual production stills of movies made in Manhattan.
