Goodby Silverstein & Partners Boosts Innovation Offering

GS&P announced today that it has hired Martin Pagh Ludvigsen as its director of creative technology and AI and appointed Simran Kaur as brand strategy director and director of Innovation Camp.

“Our goal is to make technology a change maker in our clients’ businesses by taking them into emerging spaces of all kinds,” said Margaret Johnson, CCO and partner at GS&P. “Simran and Martin break the mould of traditional agency disciplines by melding creative, strategy and technology to develop breakthrough ideas. We’re thrilled to be carving out these new roles to expand our innovation capabilities.”

Martin will establish an AI and emerging-technology strategy across all the agency’s disciplines. Prior to joining GS&P, Martin worked at ACNE Studios, BBH and MullenLowe and started working with AI in 2011. Some of his most awarded projects include Nike Football’s 'The Chain,' McDonald’s 'Track My Maccas AR' and Acura’s 'Beat That.'

Simran built and leads Innovation Camp, the agency’s first strategic innovation offering that brings together a bespoke, cross-disciplinary team to build multiyear innovation road maps for brands. The camp’s sprint model helps clients demystify emerging spaces and go from white noise to white space. Since its inception, Innovation Camp has led to new work leveraging XR and AI and is now being scaled across the agency.

“Innovation Camp was a new way of working that sparked some original thinking of how to merge Lunchables and gaming together,” said Samantha Mills, director of portable snacks and beverages brand communications at Kraft Heinz.

Prior to joining GS&P, Simran brought her multidisciplinary lens to award-winning projects, including “Go Back to Africa,” which won a D&AD Black Pencil and a Grand Prix Lion; “The Black Elevation Map,” which won a Gold Lion; “Act Too,” which won a Silver Lion; and “Trending 2 Table,” which won a Silver Lion.

“As we expand our offerings with GS&P Labs and Innovation Camp, we want leaders who can teach, create and guide us through innovation,” said Leslie Barrett, President and Partner, GS&P. “We look forward to helping our clients leverage emerging tech to activate ideas and connect with their audiences in new ways that drive tangible business results.”

GS&P has a history of innovation and was named Fast Company’s Most Innovative Ad Agency in 2021. Through its in-house innovation lab, GS&P Labs, the agency created a number of campaigns that have leveraged emerging technology and AI over the past 18 months.

“GS&P’s long history of risk-taking innovation at the centre of its creative process attracted me,” said Martin. “It’s rare to find an agency whose culture thrives on firsts, and I look forward to crafting the unexpected and redefining what’s possible with AI and creativity.”

In June GS&P appeared onstage at the Cannes Lions with OpenAI’s COO, Brad Lightcap, to discuss the future of creativity with ChatGPT and DALL•E. The presentation included a discussion about the Dalí Museum’s The Dream Tapestry, a first-of-its-kind interactive experience at the museum where visitors can turn their dreams into art. Additional AI projects have included BMW’s The Electric AI Canvas, which GS&P revealed at Art Basel in June. Featuring the BMW i5 as a canvas for generative art, the exhibition was a collaboration between GS&P and Gary Yeh. It featured custom AI-generated animations using models trained on a curated data set of contemporary artists’ works. And for the Smithsonian, GS&P created the Your Future Guide exhibit, which combined machine-learning, AI and voice-recognition technologies with personality research and hundreds of scripts (with all their variations) to create a tour of the FUTURES exhibition, guided by yourself from the year 2050.