We’re happy to announce our official lineup for 7×7: Advertising Week! For our 4th go-round, we’re taking a bit of a departure from years past and partnering with Advertising Week as an official event. Which means you can see all these awesome people presenting/performing on Tuesday October 4th at 3PM in BB Kings Times Square. For complete details on our presenters, the venue, and how to get your tickets today – be sure to check out Saatchi7x7.com. If you’re a Saatchi NY employee looking for tickets, email us for how that works.
Matt Van Hoven is the Communications Director at SKINNY, a New York based agency serving as thought leadership and chief creative architect for their clients. There he provides cross-disciplinary communications strategy, creates new relationships for the agency and funnels the agency’s creativity to the outside world. Prior to joining SKINNY Matt spent two years as the Editor of AgencySpy, where he covered just about every subject in advertising, provided outside feedback on new work and conceived new methods for understanding modern communications. But mostly he shook things up.
Jason Feifer is a senior editor at Fast Company. During college, he discovered he has severe hyposmia—a near-inability to smell or perceive flavor in food—and he’s since spent years researching the condition, and his written about it for Men’s Health (where he was a senior editor), Women’s Health, and the Washington Post. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Associated Press, Salon, ESPN the Magazine, and others. He lives in Brooklyn, and can be reached through jasonfeifer.com or on Twitter at @heyfeifer.
Hilarious, brilliant, unpredictable – comedian/musician Reggie Watts is a staple of the international performance scene. Reggie’s improvised musical sets are created on-the-spot using only his formidable voice and a looping machine. No two songs are ever the same. An avowed “disinformationist,” Reggie loves to disorientate his audiences in the most entertaining way. You may not know what Reggie is going to do, but that’s okay – he doesn’t either. As a solo performer, Reggie was handpicked by Conan O’Brien to open nightly on Conan’s entire North American “Prohibited From Being Funny on Television” tour. Reggie was featured as “Hot Comedian” in Rolling Stone’s Hot Issue 2010, named SPIN Magazine’s “Best New Comedian” and “Best of CMJ” 2010, and a featured profile in GQ’s Man Of The Year issue 2010.
Jess Greenwood is the Director of the Contagious consultancy Insider, which offers advice and insight to a number of clients from both agencies and advertisers. Prior to that, she spent a stint teaching music and drama in France and Italy before returning to London to work as a music producer and occasional writer. One more career change landed her in the advertising industry as Editor of The Reel (a monthly publication showcasing the best global creative in advertising, music videos and short films), before helping to launch Contagious. Jess is addicted to the radio and the internet in equal measure, and has a ravenous appetite for unearthing the dark underbelly of sport.
Todd Greene, inventor and industrial designer, is the founder of HeadBlade, an innovative grooming products company headquartered in Los Angeles. Todd’s eponymous shaving invention has been named by TIME magazine’s “Best Inventions Of 2000″ and the proprietary razor is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He blogs for Huffington Post and was named to GQ’s Bald 100 in 2010.
Con Williamson, Chief Creative Officer at Saatchi NY , will round out our seven as host for the event. He describes his working style as vibrant and loud. He loves making stuff and loves to do it with smart people. He’s a big believer in the collective, which is where ideas come from. His approach to problem-solving is the big Italian family dinner where you get everyone around the table, it’s rowdy and chaotic, and you get all the ideas out on the table. Ideas come first, and great ideas can come from anyone.
Bob Gruen is one of the most respected photographers in Rock and Roll history. Since the ’70s on he’s shot numerous pop culture icons, including John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. He also photographed and filmed the early New Wave and Punk movements, including The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Ramones & Blondie. Bob’s iconic photograph of John Lennon’s sleeveless New York City shirt is still found on posters and t-shirts the world round.
