Johannes Leonardo
A closer look into one of the best advertising agencies
The “Introduction to Advertising and Public Relation” course gave us the opportunity to have a better look at how the marketing field works. That’s why we came across an advertisement agency to see its progress throughout the years and how it has managed to win plenty of important awards and partner with huge multinational companies.
Johannes Leonardo was founded by Jan Jacobs, Leo Premutico and Ferdinando Verderi in New York in 2007. The company started with 4 employees (including Jacobs and Premutico) and was able to grow to 50 within 3 years. In 2011 the revenue went up 120% and was honored as “crème de la crème” across the WWP network. In the following six years the company has managed to occupy 104 people with its revenue to reach $ 26 million. WWP has provided initial funding for the agency via a 49% shareholding. In 2018, “Johannes Leonardo” bought back some of its shares to reduce WWP’s holdings to 25%
The company’s philosophy is based on the phrase “the consumer is the medium”, meaning that consumers play a huge role on the production process. Johannes Leonardo was created with the belief that we are at the beginning of a change in the way consumers engage with the brands. Technology is changing the world and as a result media will no longer have the reins. Consumers will. They will continue to become more empowered and more able to spread their ideas and turn their own voice into a brand’s message.
With this philosophy “Johannes Leonardo” has managed to work with numerous well-known companies, including Coca-Cola, Adidas Original, Alexander Wang, Volkswagen, Trip Advisor as well as Sprite and Google. Most of these campaigns have gained great attention due to the message, the cinematography and the overall feeling.
Even from the first years of its activity the company was able to create buzz with the Google “Demo Slam” campaign. The campaign, which was introduced as a way to encourage internet users to explore Google’s technological innovations, received nearly one billion impressions and also won a Silver Cyber Lion. Then the company went on winning numerous awards such as the Mobile Grand Prix in 2012 for Google’s “Project Re:Brief” campaign that reconceptualized classic ads from Volvo, Coca-Cola and Avis.
Johannes Leonardo has also won the top prize at the Cannes Lions Festival in the Entertainment and Music category for the “Original is Never Finished” campaign for Adidas Original in 2017. The campaign reimagining the Frank Sinatra song “My Way” and featuring celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Petra Collins, Pharrell Williams and David Beckham is also one of the top ten most viewed ads in YouTube in 2017. The agency’s work for Adida’s Original has garnered over 30 awards in 2017 across Cannes, D&AD and the One Show.
Overall the company has been awarded 14 Cannes Lions since 2007. From having winning the AdAge Small Agency of the year in 2011 “Johannes Leonardo” has managed to be recognized as one of the top 10 advertising agencies in USA. In 2016 the company was featured on AdAge’s A-List Agencies to Watch and in 2018 it was named the №4 agency on AdAge’s Agency A-List.
To sum up, the reasons why we chose “Johannes Leonardo” and it stood out to us are because of the very important clients, the numerous awards and the huge increase of the revenue that they have managed to achieve in 11 years.
