Judges

The Dadi Awards are delighted that the following stellar talent have agreed to be our Grand Dadis for 2008.  Our thanks to Phil Jones for assembling another amazing panel.

Managing Director, Real Time Consultancy

Phil Jones completed a 5 year apprenticeship as a hot-metal compositor in Manchester in the 1960s before moving to London in 1973 and setting up typography specialists APT, which he grew to over 100 staff before selling the business to an Ad Agency in 1990.

He became MD of Real Time Studio in 1991 (in the pre-digital era) and grew a team of ten to around 110 
becoming one of the leading digital agencies in the UK before merging with DM agency EHS where he became Vice Chairman of ehsrealtime (now EHS Brann) with 400 staff in several locations.

Amongst the digital highlights was a ten year relationship with www.Diesel.com, and www.Canon.co.uk and the online launches for the new MINI, The Premier League, Sport England and the launch of England Fans for the Football Association.

E-Consultancy's Internet Decade event in 2004 recognised Phil as one of the top 100 digital influencers over the previous ten years. In 2006 Phil was nominated for a Lifetime Achievement award at the Net Imperative awards in London.

Having given up full time employment in January 2004. Phil formed Real Time Consultancy through which he acts as an advisor and consultant for creative businesses and organises annual lunches for the design, digital and sports community, digitalpodge, podgelunch.com and sportspodge.

Executive Creative Director, Grey Advertising

According to Campaign, the highest peer ranked CD in the direct/digital space, and making an entry in the ‘top ten digital talent’ table for ‘06 and the ‘A-List’ in ‘07, Jon Williams has recently been appointed as Executive Creative Director of Grey Advertising, one of the first digital creatives to take the creative helm at a leading mainstream agency. 

Prior to this move he was Head of Digital (Creative) at Beattie McGuiness Bungay. Previously he was Creative Director, and Joint Managing Partner at Harrison Troughton Wunderman and Interactive chief at Publicis. After graduating from Hallam University, and subsequent training at The School of Communication Arts, he worked above, below and through the line on products as diverse as Prudential insurance, DePaul Trust, Hewlett Packard, Adidas, Sensodyne Toothpaste, X-box, COI, Renault, Camelot, Land Rover and Microsoft.

His work has been used globally, and has won over 65 international awards for both creativity and effectiveness, including D&AD Silver, Cannes Lions (of which four are gold), Creative Circle, BTAA, the Art Directors Club of New York, a number of Grand Prix’s including the DMA, Precision Marketing and IMAA. He created the most awarded ad in the U.K. in 2003 (6th in the world) and the second most awarded ad in the U.K. in 2004 (4th in the world) as reported by ‘The Won Show’.

Creatively, he helped develop the first interactive TV ad on Channel 4, the first MPU in Europe and was also responsible for the first use of infra-red Hypertaged posters in a national campaign. Jon also conceived and spearheaded the development of a ground breaking new form of interactive broadcast advertising. This allows viewers to choose their own path through a seemingly normal linear TV spot simply by pushing a button on their remote control.

Jon has either sat on or been foreman of many juries including the New York Festivals, D&AD, Cannes Lions and numerous domestic creative award juries. He is a member of D&AD, and also the Institute of Directors, a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, a contributing author to IPA’s DiTV Guidelines, a mentor at the Digital Streets Project and regularly speaks at conferences such as the Edinburgh TV Festival, The I.E.A., MILIA, and the Institute of Public Policy Research Group regarding digital creativity. As well as appearing on BBC News 24 and Radio 4 and 5, he appears regularly in national and international press. Originally cutting his teeth as an above the line copywriter, now after over a decade and a half in advertising, Jon has considerable experience in all conventional media channels, but prefers to spend his time in the unconventional.

Creative Director, Pre-Loaded

Rob Corradi is co-founder and Exec Creative Director of digital agency Preloaded. Now in it's eighth year, the agency has developed a global reputation for creating engaging interactive experiences and branded entertainment for a broad range clients.

Rob's previous judging experiences includes D&AD, BAFTA, BIMA, CLIOs and New York Festival. Rob has also presented at a number of creatively focussed festivals and conferences on digital including SXSW, Iconologica,
OFFF and Mad in Spain.

Chief Creative Officer, Filter Worldwide

Alasdair is co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Filter Worldwide, an agency dedicated to delivery of content to today’s popular mobile devices.

Having worked at the leading edge of new media design for CD-ROM, Internet, DVD and Interactive Television since the late 1980’s, Scott has now turned his talents to the mobile space which represents the most dynamic sector of the interactive world.

Alasdair has been successful in starting and developing two previous agencies ZAP/factor [1990 to 1993], a 10 person creative hotshop widely acknowledged as one of the UK’s very first interactive agencies and AMX [1994 to 2002] which he founded with Professor Malcolm Garrett, building up to 120 employees in 2002.

Alasdair is a member and Interactive Judge at British Design and Art Direction [D&AD], a voting member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts [BAFTA], sits on the Executive Committee of the British Interactive Multimedia Association [BIMA] and advises a number of other industry bodies on the future of digital interactive content.

He is also a Fellow at the Royal Society for the Arts, has presented two television shows for SkyTV about the creative use of technology and regularly comments on mobile content and marketing for publications, radio and television.

Founder, Perfect Fools

Partrick Gardner, 37, started his career as an assistant speechwriter to the US Vice President in 1990 and 1992. During the mid-nineties he worked for the global language education group EF Education on business development and marketing projects in Indonesia, Mexico, PR China, Russia, Sweden, the UK and the US.

He has been focused on Internet advertising since 1995, and co-founded Stockholm-based Houdini Digital Creations in 1999 and Perfect Fools in 2002.

Gardner is currently a partner at Perfect Fools, where he continues to write for client campaigns, mainly from the company’s Stockholm office. His articles on digital media have appeared in magazines such as Computer Arts Special and Cre@teOnline.

Executive Creative Director, EHS Brann

Patrick Baglee is a copywriter and executive creative director at EHS Brann. He has worked with British Gas, Barclays, COI, Diageo, Tesco and Diesel and received awards from DMA, D&AD, DBA, BIMA, Campaign and the IPA.

His writing on creativity has appeared in eye, Graphis, Creative Review, Ampersand, Campaign and Precision Marketing.

He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts, a full member of the D&AD, former chair of the Typographic Circle and the founder of 4Designers, an annual student design conference held in London and New York.

Chief Executive Officer, Reading Room 

Simon formed Reading Room in 1996, and is joint CEO. Reading Room is the highest ranking digital agency in the 2007 Sunday Times Tech Track league; the UK’s fastest growing wholly independent digital communications agency (Design Week 2007); and has been voted Digital Marketing Agency of the Year (Impact Awards 2007). With over 150 staff, Reading Room has offices in London, Manchester, Canberra and Sydney.

Simon’s approach to building Reading Room was to provide a strategic approach to Internet development. He felt that many existing new media agencies did not have the necessary experience to become long term strategic partners for their clients.

He has overseen agency direction and sought to recruit amongst the brightest talents in the industry. He is now heavily engaged in Reading Room’s planned international expansion and is determined to retain the Reading Room philosophy during this period of high growth.

Simon worked for some years within the Public sector, principally the National Health Service and was responsible for several major relocation exercises. Following this he spent ten years at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). After taking charge of the Institute’s fledgling Internet presence, he was offered the position of full time Webmaster.

www.figleaves.com

Dane Peter Pedersen is something of an internet entrepreneur and visionary and in the 1990s was a key player in building up a digital agency that delivered web technologies for some major UK brands.

Pedersen went on to work for TV station Channel 4 where he led the successful delivery of the channel's interactive offering online and on TV, and he managed the technical build of the infrastructure and
websites for Big Brother, E4, FilmFour and channel4.com.

More recently, as CTO of online gaming firm Blue Square Pedersen was instrumental in facilitating information sharing between rival companies during the denial of service blackmail attacks targeting the UK industry
in 2004.

In 2006 Pedersen was promoted from his role at Blue Square to CTO of its parent Rank Group, where he has been tasked with putting IT at the heart of some major and rapid change at the organisation.

In 2008 Peter joined Figleaves.com where he enjoys his work enormously.

What they say about him: "Peter is a superb thinker with an outstanding ability to remain calm when under pressure. He's got a brain the size of a planet, accompanied by a sunny disposition."

Pedersen collects and restores original oil and watercolour paintings, which he occasionally sells through his own online company.