Jack Morton Worldwide, the global brand experience agency, today announces the expansion of its Middle East office. The agency, which opened the Dubai-based office in October 2011 serving clients throughout the Middle East, has recruited six new members of staff to manage its growing business.

Jason Rodbard joins Jack Morton as Creative Director. Jason has more than 12 years of creative experience within the field of brand experience design and has worked for numerous international brands including BlackBerry, Ford, Nokia, Johnnie Walker, Nivea, Toyota, Getty Images, English Heritage and Sony Ericsson. Most recently, Rodbard based in Dubai since 2007, has worked with some of the Middle East’s biggest names including Dubai Properties and GMASCO.

Also joining Jack Morton is Niall Polley as Senior Business Development Manager. Niall previously led the Corporate Sales team at Yas Marina Circuit from its opening in 2009. His team’s responsibilities included corporate sales and hospitality at the Formula One Etihad airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Niall has ten years’ experience in commercial and relationship management roles for major sporting events.

Sufeena Hussain and Ahmad Diab join as Senior Account Managers. Sufeena has over a decade of extensive event production and project management experience, spanning many countries, cultures and religions. In her previous agency roles, she has worked with clients including: Abu Dhabi Government, Al Aan TV, Emirates Airline, HSBC, Unilever, Ferrari and Virgin Megastores.

Ahmad Diab has 10 years of experience in the management, hospitality and logistics industries in Lebanon, Germany and UAE. During this period he has worked particularly extensively with clients within the government sector including: Etihad Rail, Emirates Steel, the Abu Dhabi Department of Transport, Masdar City and Crown Prince Court.

Elham Navar joins as Graphic Designer. Prior to joining Jack Morton, Elham Namvar worked at Promedia Advertising where her clients included Hilton Hotels, the First Group, Rem Koolhaas, Ramada, Rotana, and the Dubai Fashion Week.

And Matthew Serpico takes the role of Project Coordinator. Matthew joins the Middle East office from Jack Morton’s San Francisco office in the US. Matthew will be using his experience working with clients including Samsung, Google, Nintendo and Salesforce in the US, to help drive forward innovative work for clients in the Middle East.

The office is led by Joint Managing Directors Alex Apthorpe and Yvonne Hoffzimmer.

Yvonne Hoffzimmer, Joint Managing Director, Jack Morton Worldwide said: “We are delighted with the Middle East office’s success within this short period and the appointment of our new team members further strengthens our offering to clients. The new team bring a wealth of local knowledge and experience combined with the passion, creativity and strategic thinking to create truly innovative campaigns. It is an exciting time for us and we are determined to use our talent and experience to help our clients exceed their goals and expectations.”

The Middle East office last month created Dunyana, the program for the partners of the World Energy Forum delegates – which included some of the world’s most influential leaders, politicians, heads of state and businessmen. The agency was responsible for the conceptualisation and design of all aspects of the program, from the brand identity and the program’s key messages through to the program content and environmental design. The agency’s other clients include: Dubai Water & Electricity Authority, Sky News Arabia, HP, GMASCO, Jumeirah, Chalhoub Group, Juicy Couture, Kaspersky and Saudi Aramco.

Julian Pullan, President, EMEA, Jack Morton Worldwide said: “I am thrilled with the progress our Middle East office is making. The team has already comfortably exceeded our targets for the first year of operation and has a client list which would be the envy of any agency in the region. It is a fantastic foundation on which to build and I’m very much looking forward to the year ahead.”

Global brand experience agency Jack Morton Worldwide today announced that it received its 18th Emmy® Award for designing the set of NBC News’ second annual “Education Nation” event. Held every September in New York City, “Education Nation” is a three-day national broadcast aimed at sparking solutions-oriented conversations about the state of education in America. The 2011 broadcast was heralded for its innovative set design, which was spearheaded by Jack Morton, as it allowed for real-time engagement with in-studio audience members, at-home viewers and the broader online community.

NBC News tapped Jack Morton’s New York office to design a space fitting for the event, which featured high-profile speakers including Brian Williams, Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet and Melinda Gates. Held at New York City’s Rockefeller Center, the event presented a unique challenge for the Jack Morton design team who had to transform an unconventional outdoor space into a dynamic and flexible arena to host discussions, high-profile lectures and Town Hall-style meetings. The space also had to serve as a fully functional broadcast studio.

“This project really underscores what Jack Morton is all about – in this case, taking intangible concepts such as dialogue, spontaneity and exchange about education in America and translating them into meaningful, hands-on experiences that really resonate with the client’s core audience,” said Jim Fenhagen, SVP of Design at Jack Morton, who led the design team. “We are incredibly proud of the team responsible for this win and appreciate those in the industry who continue to recognize and celebrate our work.”

Utilizing Rockefeller Center’s world-famous Prometheus statue – a fitting symbol of intelligence and a champion of mankind – as its centerpiece, the event space featured digital projection mapping to display content around the Prometheus statue, including a “digital fountain” of real-time tweets about the event from in-studio and outside participants. Designed to complement the way in which people naturally engage in conversation and exchange ideas, the event also featured a blogger lounge, break-out areas and turntable seating to keep the space evolving to meet the needs of the ongoing broadcast.

This is Jack Morton’s 18th overall Emmy® Award and its 7th News and Documentary Emmy® Award. The agency’s Emmy® win for “Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Lighting, Direction and Scenic Design” was announced by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) during the 33rd Annual News and Documentary Emmy® Awards ceremony held on October 1, 2012 in New York City – right off the heels of working with NBC News once again for its third annual “Education Nation” event.

Jack Morton Worldwide, the global brand experience agency, was the designer of the set for the 2012 Republican National Convention—responsible for creating a scenic design that has already been hailed as setting new standards for staging at political conventions.

Led by award-winning designer Jim Fenhagen and Eddie Knasiak, the Jack Morton design team worked with the RNC for over a year to develop the set, which stood out not only for the quality of its design and warm wood materials but also for the ambition of the 13 massive LED screens that anchored the set and debuted new video technology.

“We approached this just as we would with a brand,” said Fenhagen, SVP of Design in Jack Morton’s New York office. “We listened to the client’s needs and we built the experience design around that.”

Fenhagen points to three areas of focus for the experience design team at Jack Morton:

Connection – “It was important that the set didn’t put speakers up on a pedestal. The design ethos was ‘America’s living room’, and we used warm hues and textured wood surfaces. As we adjusted the set for Governor Romney’s acceptance, we were especially conscious of using design cues to reinforce accessibility.”
Differentiation – “We wanted to signal a completely new direction by doing things with the set that have not been done before at conventions. It’s the most abstract convention set I’ve ever seen—more like a Broadway show in ambition and bravado than the more typically conservative approach of political set design.”
Relevance – “The set had to feel American without being too literal. For inspiration, we turned to Frank Lloyd Wright, architect of the American Prairie Style. That came out in how we contrasted the warm woods with the ambitious technology involved in the 13 LED screens we placed over the stage. Such an ambitious use of LED screens has never been attempted—and it gave the RNC flexibility to share one monumental image or a collage of related images.”
Fenhagen has won 17 Emmy awards for broadcast set design. He has created sets for Piers Morgan, Jon Stewart and Martha Stewart, among many others. His co-designer for the RNC set, Eddie Knasiak, is a veteran broadcast designer.

Three consecutive wins in a single competition: in ice hockey and soccer, they call it a hat trick. By that definition, Jack Morton Worldwide scored a double hat trick at this year’s International Business Awards (nicknamed “the Stevies”).

The global brand experience agency not only won three Gold Stevie awards—it also won “Best New Product Introduction Event” for the third year in a row.

Jack Morton earned Gold Stevie awards for:

• The launch of T-Mall.com in Beijing, for Best New Product Introduction Event
• A history film for Ericsson, in the category of Technology Sales
• Ericsson’s 2012 CES Keynote in the category Best Sales Presentation

Jack Morton also won a Bronze Stevie for its work with Ericsson at the 2012 Mobile World Congress in the Best Tradeshow or Convention category.

Josh McCall, Jack Morton’s Chairman & CEO, commented: “We’re honored to receive this recognition and really proud to see our tremendous capabilities in launching new products winning Gold for the third year in a row—especially from our fast-growing Jack Morton operation in China.”

In 2010 and 2011, respectively, Jack Morton won Gold Stevies for Best New Product Introduction Event for its work to help Samsung launch its 3D TV and to help Thomson Reuters launch its Eikon market data desktop product.

The International Business Awards received entries from more than 50 nations and territories in 2012. Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word for “crowned,” the awards will be presented to winners at a gala awards banquet at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Seoul, South Korea on 15 October.

Jack Morton Worldwide, the global brand experience agency, created a major experience to bring to life BP’s key capabilities for 2,500 global VIPs, stakeholders and employees. The BP Technology Experience took place at the Linbury Theatre, the Royal Opera House, during July and August.

A company at the forefront of scientific and engineering technology, BP’s brief was to create a once in a lifetime experience with technology at its core, which told the story of ‘More Discovery, More Recovery, More Efficiency’. And one which pushed the boundaries of corporate experiences.

Jack Morton’s response as creative agency for the BP Technology Experience was to create a fully immersive and sensory experience that was not only technologically advanced, but also borrowed from theatrical traditions both physical and emotional.

“We realised very early on that it wouldn’t work to create an experience that the audience received passively. What we set out to achieve,” said Tim Elliott, Executive Creative Director for Jack Morton, “was to re-design the corporate experience – to take it to a new level of theatre, storytelling, technology, drama and adventure. We wanted to take the visitor on a journey to somewhere new, and to paraphrase BP, to ‘discover more’. A journey full of unexpected turns where the rules of what the guests experience change continually, and a journey which was appropriate for the world in which BP lives.”

Jack Morton was appointed after a competitive pitch process involving eight agencies. Since the appointment, the agency and brand have begun partnering on a number of other projects.

Chris Sedgwick, Technology Experience Project Director, BP said: “We have been blown away with the feedback we have received from our guests who went through The BP Technology Experience. This is down to the incredible talents of Jack Morton: the inspirational creative that constantly surprised guests as they went through the experience, the “wizards” who used industry leading technology to tell our technology story and the attention to detail and professionalism of the team all meant the experience was a huge success."

The story of ‘More Discovery, More Recovery and More Efficiency’ was told in three chapters, using three physical areas within the Linbury Theatre. Jack Morton took the audience on a journey of discovery into BP’s world using the very latest in filmmaking, CGI and projection techniques. The truly multi-disciplinary experience brought together some of the most creative minds in the business to use cutting-edge techniques in new and innovative ways.

Julian Pullan, Jack Morton Worldwide President, EMEA, commented: “BP had an ambition to create a unique, once in a life-time experience. We have shared this ambition and this has given us an unparalleled creative and technological opportunity. We are delighted to have helped realise BP’s vision.”