Josh Sklar
Austin, Texas 78759 USA • +1 512 415.1698 •
[email protected]http://www.linkedin.com/in/joshsklar
Experience
2010 – Present
Heresy, LLC
President, Creative Director (and Chief Heretic)
Austin, Texas
Conduct customized workshops for professionals in the advertising and marketing industry to help them understand digital media and its opportunities, while advising senior executives on how to transition their agency or organization along with their skills.
Evolving traditional marketers into digitally-savvy marketing leaders.
• Discovery/Recommendation reports
• Evaluations
• Workshops
• Mentoring/Coaching
• Master classes
• Screening candidates
• Writing/Coordinating (digital/integrated) RFPs
• Ideation/Blueprints
• Project Plans
2009 – 2010
WPP’s Enfatico
Global Creative Director / Director of Digital Strategy and Operations
Austin, Texas
• Worldwide Agency of Record for Dell with a $4.5 billion dollar advertising and marketing budget.
• Developed strategy for Dell’s global online presence with an emphasis on efficient, adaptable templates and tool kits while focusing on localization needs for regional and local markets.
• Responsible for all digital marketing activities for Dell on agency side
(Web sites, microsites, extranets, banners, social media/commerce, products demos, online videos, e-mail marketing, widgets, etc.).
• Oversaw global digital creative and integration with offline advertising.
• Creative lead for all advertising and marketing, including print, for Dell’s Public line of business (government, healthcare, and education).
• Digital creative lead for Consumer, Small-to-Medium Business, and Large Enterprise lines of business.
• Managed day-to-day operations with staff in five countries and the entire Digital group in Austin.
2007 – 2009
WPP Digital’s BLUE Interactive
Global Chief Creative Officer
Singapore
Won Overall Agency of the Year for 2008
• Led the creative teams.
• Developed intelligent, engaging advertising and marketing communications solutions for pitches and ongoing project work.
• Worked closely with the MDs in each of the offices (Singapore, London, Palo Alto, NYC, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai) to develop passion and skills for creativity within the agency.
• Raised the quality and innovation of the creative in the network to match the analytical skills for which BLUE is known.
• Extended the agency’s creative leadership by taking a data-centric approach to creativity and applying it to iTV and digital printing.
• BLUE’s clients include:
o Cisco (APAC and US)
o Dow Corning (global Agency of Record)
o Hewlett-Packard (APAC regional AOR)
o Johnson & Johnson (APAC)
o Microsoft (Singapore AOR)
o Motorola (APAC)
o Proctor & Gamble (APAC regional AOR)
o Polycom (global AOR)
o Raffles Hotel Group (global AOR)
o Singapore Airlines (global AOR)
o Starwood Hotels and Resorts (APAC regional AOR)
-Sheraton -Westin -St. Regis -Le Méridien -Four Points
1986 – 2008
Logicworks (formerly Hyde Park Studio)
Founder / Creative Director
• In 2002, Hyde Park Studio morphed into a non-hierarchical ‘virtual’ network of new media professionals to target small-to-medium businesses and to help achieve quality of life for all involved while maintaining maximum quality.
• As Hyde Park Studio, we took in jobs or served as contract designers, art directors, copywriters, illustrators and/or trainers in ad agencies (Austin, Houston, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, New York, New Jersey, Singapore, Jakarta, Bali, Kuala Lumpur) such as:
o BBDO
o Euro RSCG
o Grey Advertising
o JWT
o Leo Burnett
o Lowe & Partners
o McCann Erickson
o Young & Rubicam
2003 – 2007
Texas Association of School Boards
Division Director, Online Communications
Austin, Texas
• Ran two departments consisting of media services (photography and video production) and interactive media.
• Defined the vision for the online communications, marketing, and branding strategies of the Association and its subsidiaries and how they could integrate with offline efforts. Including:
o an aggregate purchasing cooperative system for school districts and municipalities that brings together hundreds of vendors resulting in $240 million a year in sales;
o a financial management subsidiary with over $7 billion in funds administered through online tools;
o a $100+ million self-insurance program whose assets are handled through online entities for customer claims and staff management.
• Managed all online activities for communicating with the more than 7,000 school board members and 560,000 district employees (for serving over four million Texas public school students).
• Developed robust methodologies for use throughout the organization to allow Internet-based content and applications to be developed and maintained by all 21 divisions of TASB, regardless of individual technical knowledge or ability.
• Conceived relevant questions and conducted stakeholder interviews, focus groups and user acceptance testing for development of accurate communications strategies.
• Created brand and Web guidelines to be followed by all TASB divisional content owners.
• Graphic design, logo/brand development, information architecture, user interface development, content mapping, etc. for development and maintenance of TASB’s membership Web site, Intranet and many other online entities.
1994 – 2003
Pacific Rim Imports
Founder
Bali/Singapore/Jakarta, Indonesia/Austin, Texas
• Started online catalog business to sell Southeast Asian art through the World Wide Web. One of first online shops in the world.
• Established e-commerce sales model used by future top brand clients (including Nokia and Compaq).
2000 – 2002
XM Worldwide, Bates Advertising / Cordiant Communications Group
Global Chief Creative Officer
New York City
• Helped guide the direction of the worldwide digital network in 14 countries (on the senior management team and the North America board).
• Developed and implemented creative strategies for clients.
• Directly responsible for the level of creative quality of projects.
• Worked with the global CEO and other senior staff to win new business.
• Led major client projects through initial concepts, proposals and executions.
• Represented XM’s creative position by giving talks, writing articles / papers.
• Created brand guidelines for XM.
• Helped local offices with difficult issues related to projects and clients.
• Acted as North American Creative Director for companies such as:
o Accenture
o Hyundai
o Kraft
o Pfizer
o US Department of Defense
1996 – 2000
XM Asia Pacific, Bates Advertising / Cordiant Communications Group
Chief Executive Officer / Executive Creative Director
Singapore
• Business profitable from first year.
• Grown to one of the top 40 digital agencies in the world in terms of revenues (according to Advertising Age and Adweek) within three years.
• Highest margins within the Cordiant network for any subsidiary.
• Most industry-awarded company in the Asia Pacific resulting in a high profile.
• Clients included agency of record status for:
o Compaq (regionally – 14 countries)
o ESPN (regionally – 18 countries)
o Heineken (regionally – 12 countries)
o Nokia (regionally – 18 countries)
o Singapore Airlines (globally)
o Visa (regionally – 5 countries)
1995 – 1997
IMAGEry
Writer / Editor
Bi-weekly newsletter for the graphic design industry that went out to over 350 subscribing ad agencies and design houses containing insights, advice and step-by-step tutorials on everything from trapping to typography to color models. Also about the possibilities of the Internet and advertising in those early days, providing a glossary of terms defined in each issue.
1994 – 1996
Magic Media, KIG Worldwide
Partner / Creative Director
Singapore
• Began this Asia regional production/post-production video business as a spin-off of KIG Worldwide (see next position).
• One of the first implementations of a nonlinear, digital video editing system in a studio in Singapore.
1992 – 1994
KIG Worldwide
Group Creative Director
Jakarta, Indonesia
• Established design and photography studio to manage needs of 23 conglomerate subsidiaries throughout Asia as well as a pre-press service bureau for both in-house and external business opportunities.
• Trained and managed staff of 30. Within two 1/2 years the studios were profitable and self-manageable when previously the Group, one of the world’s largest manufacturers and distributors of glass and flatware, wasn’t using computers at all for its design and printing processes and hadn’t considered selling these services.
• Services included package design, graphics for plates and mugs (for collectibles such as Disney’s The Lion King and Aladdin movies), annual reports, brochures, logo development, copywriting and a whole range of collateral.
Publications
01/2000 – Present
ADOI Magazine
Monthly New Media Columnist
Write a monthly column for this advertising industry trade magazine that is published out of Malaysia for consumption in Asia.
Affiliations
International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
(Member / Jurist for the Webby Awards)
Asian New Media Association [ANMA]
(Founder & President)
Internet Advertising Bureau [IAB]
(Charter Member - Asia)
Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies [4As]
(Full Member/Committee Chair - Singapore)
Additional Information
• Most awarded interactive creative director in Asia (1996-2000)
(according to the 4A’s & Ad Age International)
• First new media creative from the Asia Pacific to be a juror for the Clio’s international advertising festival (1999)
• Chairman of 4A’s Creative Circle Awards new media jury / President of the Asia Advertising Awards digital jury
• Jurist for numerous new media award shows from 1996-present
• Worked with the Economic Development Board [EDB] of Singapore and the National Computer Board [NCB] to help develop industry relevant courses with the local universities, polytechnics and design schools
• Taught (English, Graphic Design, Design Applications) for over 15 years
• One of the featured subjects in The BBS Documentary, about the early, pre-Web days of social telecommunications
• Appeared as an “expert” guest several times on CNBC, CNN, Asia Business News and quoted in the Asian Wall Street Journal, Internet.com as well as other print and online publications
