Three high-level South African creatives, all of whom have returned from overseas agencies, are set to launch a new creative shop in Cape Town.
Noel Cottrell, Andrew Whitehouse and Justin Gomes have teamed up to form FoxP2, an agency that aims to rival Net#work BBDO.
Cottrell, who left South Africa in 2001 to head up Kirshenbaum Bond in San Francisco, explains that FoxP2 is the name of the creativity gene that enabled human beings to evolve from apes.
‘I know the right-brain drain had a real effect on the local industry and we’re excited to be reversing the trend – even if it’s just three brain cells, we’re back,†he says.
Cottrell is perhaps best known in South Africa as one of the founders of Joe Public. At Kirshenbaum Bond, he worked on blue-chip clients including Barnes&Noble, Cisco Systems, BBC, Bacardi and San Francisco Giants Baseball. Under his leadership, the agency was voted Adweek‘s Regional Agency Of The Year.
Whitehouse and Gomes, who joined Lowe Bull Johannesburg in 1999, are perhaps best known for their award-winning work on Dulux. At the 2002 Loerie Awards, they amassed a total of two Grand Prixs, seven gold and thirteen silver trophies (not to mention three Gold Lions at the Cannes International Advertising Festival).
They left South Africa in 2002 for creative powerhouse TBWA Paris to work on accounts including Nissan and Playstation, but were lured to Lowe New York to work on Nokia and the world-famous Got Milk? brand.
It was there that they met up with Cottrell and the three began talking about returning to South Africa.
Says Cottrell: ”We chatted to people back home, and they told us that there was a real opportunity for a great creative agency, a ballsy agency, an agency that takes no bullshit — another Net#work.
”So we decided to come back and give it a real go.”
After four years’ experience abroad, the three admen have some interesting new theories.
‘Overseas advertising tends to sacrifice the art for science, whereas here in South Africa the reverse is true. With FoxP2, we’re looking to find that perfect balance between art and science,†says Gomes.
The Dulux campaign, for example, wasn’t only about art — post the ”Any colour you can think of” campaign, sales increased by 40 percent.
The FoxP2 team move into their premises in Cape Town on September 1. So far, they have one client (Joburg-based) and are in the midst of bedding down a second.
”We may be based in Cape Town, but that doesn’t mean we’re a Cape Town agency,” Cottrell stresses. ”South Africans don’t realise that two hours doesn’t necessarily another agency make. We’re a national agency. We just happen to be based in Cape Town.”