Richard Max

I was contracted by Saatchi and Saatchi’s in London to direct them in ‘bringing Digital to the heart of the agency’ after the demise of Saatchi Interactive. It was my responsibility to run all London-based Digital work, brainstorm with the creative’s (mainly with the global creative director), assist the Head of Operations’ in sorting process, scope and Digital project management. I was also responsible for building a scalable supply network of third party companies that Saatchi’s could utilise on specific Digital projects, recruiting both freelancers and permanent staff and vetting all client pitches from a creative and technical perspective. The London-based work I oversaw included Visa, T-Mobile, Atlantis, Starbucks, Cadburys, NSPCC, Axa, General Mills, the Marine Stewardship Council and the rebuilding of Saatchis website.

Responsible for overseeing the development of numerous campaigns including a AS3 Flash micro site for the launch of the G1 Phone from Google. This project included an outsourced Google Map game (via their API) with full database driven scoring and viral functionality. Throughout this project I had to liaise regularly with Google, their business and technical contacts and the game’s developers’ who were based in New York and LA. I also was responsible for commissioning the same company (SMERC) to build a G1 Mapping Game / Engine that utilised the new Open Source mobile Android operating system. The game could be played on the phone or downloaded as a Open Source SDK from T-Mobile to assist developers to develop new, map-based games. In addition to this, I also managed a series of multi-lingual rich-media banner campaigns including one for the launch of the new G1 Phone from Google and assisted in the procurement of suitable external companies to work on a new dance-based avatar’ campaign.

UK’s First Android Game

Double Your Credit Banner

Double Your Credit Website

Google G1 Banner

Google G1 Site

Researched and specked out a touch screen game campaign for Cadburys Cream Eggs to be used over the Christmas period in London-based bus shelters. The campaign was utilising outdoor media owners JC Decaux’s screens and technologies and, thus, I had to liaise with their technologists too.

Atlantis – The Palm is a luxury hotel based at the Palm, Dubai. It was my responsibility to advise the account directors’ on the best way to implement their clients Digital offerings. Work overseen included a Paper Vision based content carousel with a full CMS for their site, a variety of flash assets for their American hosted/built site and numerous email rich-media mail campaigns for delivery via their preferred mail marketing companies. I also assisted the Account Director compile the Atlantis 2009 Digital Agenda presentation for Sol Kerzner.

Website

Carousel

Attended numerous strategic meetings to discuss and begin the implementation of General Mills’ 2009 Online strategy for their numerous food-based brands. These brands included Green Giant, Betty Crocker, Haagan-Dazs and Old El Paso.

Whilst working as Freelance Technical Director at Saatchis I was responsible for Technical Project Management of a half finished Database-driven Flash project that they had commenced for the Post It brand of 3M.

The project was an emulation of the Successful Deal or No Deal TV programme. Cash prizes were available and thus additional security measures had to be implemented both within the flash-based content, the phone and on the server via an SSL certificate. Other challenges included the localisation of content, IP address restrictions and load balancing.

Responsible for overseeing the London-based rebuilding and populating of a website that had been initially built for Starbucks by their American-based web development agency. The overriding issue was the lack of flexibility in the existing AS3 code to implement content changes efficiently and I advocated the rewriting of the classes to cater for an xml-based content structure for easy updating and localization and to ensure future coding compatibility.

Oversaw a tv campaign’s conversion to online. This included working with the creative’s to maximise the sourced material from the existing commercial’s footage. I was also responsible for raising numerous concerns about impossible creative treatments that were about to be pitched to the client.

Assisting the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) with a producing a content layer and corresponding website to work within the new Google Oceans application.

Assisted the above the line creative’s extend their award winning campaign against cruelty to children onto the web as an interactive game. Liaised with both the animation production company and a Kiev-based development partner to get the project started and built a working flash demonstration illustrating the way the code should be implemented.

Responsible for overseeing two large Digital campaigns that included numerous video/flash asset creations for Visa’s partner sites and a wealth of rich media banners that ran on FlashTalking. I had to attend numerous client meetings and liaise regularly with the account director, Visa’s head of marketing and their third-party suppliers about all aspects of their campaign. I was also responsible for giving guidance to the film production companies involved on how best to optimise their shoots for successful content capture for a web-based campaign, sourcing technological companies for massive brand building public events and liaising with creative Digital agencies who were providing new treatments for a campaign.