1. James Hilton
James Hilton, the co-founder and chief creative officer at AKQA.
Although only 28, James is a new-media veteran. His early work included
the highly awarded Durex website. He followed that by appearing in the
D&AD annual, aged 24, for his work on BMW. Hilton's latest work has been
on the acclaimed Nike Run London campaign.
2. Mark Cridge
In charge of Gluemedia, Cridge made his name working on the Lynx and
Sony PlayStation accounts at Modem Media before moving to Deepgroup's
online creative agency in November 1999. It will be interesting to see
how he steers Glue now Deepgroup has bombed and St Luke's is holding the
purse strings.
3. Gray & Granlund
The creative team at Abel & Baker's London office are definitely
attracting some attention. Catherine Gray and Kim Granlund have worked
on some great creative this year including work for Virgin Mobile and
the website-altering Monkeylizer for ITV Digital.
4. Fred Flade
Formerly the design director at Deepend, Fred Flade has taken on the
same role at de-construct - a breakaway of seven people from Deepend
when it went under in September. The independent agency has only been
trading a few months but already counts Technics, Panasonic and Virgin
Trains as clients.
5. Chris McGrail
Kleber's creative director has been garnering praise from his peers for
the agency's work this year. Kleber specialises in music sites and works
for Fatboy Slim and has won awards this year for its work on Warp
records.
6. Simon Crab
The creative director at Lateral. Crab has churned out some top-class
stuff for the RSPCA and the agency won the task for all of the US work
on Levi's. Lateral's site for Stella Artois' Stellascreen has attracted
high praise as well.
7. Justin Copplestone
The creative director at Good Technology has to be praised for good
creative on the PlayStation 2 Wipeout Fusion website for Sony. His
U2.com stuff has won two awards and Audi, a long-term client, is happy
enough to give the green light to a complete revamp of its online
presence in the UK.
8. Marcus Vinton
Loathe as Campaign is to give Vinton any more coverage - he's worth
keeping an eye on with his new venture based at Leo Burnett's offices
and backed by Bcom3. Spring Communications will function as Bcom3's
global offering for iDTV but will primarily focus on Leo Burnett. Let's
see what he comes up with.
9. David Hurren
Made the executive creative director at Ogilvy Interactive last year,
Hurren has presided over some good work including IBM ads for Wimbledon
and more popular Felix viral campaigns. Crucially, the agency has been
having a good time financially with a healthy turnover of £9.5
million this year.
10. Andrew Mason
Zentropy's art director has been described as having a manic attention
to detail. Mason's output includes nesquik.co.uk and work on Captain
Birds Eye. Mason is a rising star in the Zentropy creative team.