Patrick Plutschow

 Patrick Plutschow is half Japanese, half Swiss, but seemingly appears Mexican to immigration officials at Los Angeles International Airport. Born in Japan, Patrick spent most of his school years in the US, Japan, and Switzerland. In 1990 he took a year off from college and spent 6 months in a Kyoto Zen Temple and the other six producing tracks for a well-known Hip Hop act called Boo-Yaa Tribe in LA. Both required his head shaved.
After graduating top of his class at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena with a BFA in Advertising / Communication Design, he started his advertising career as the first creative ever hired at Ground Zero. He then moved on to agencies such as Butler, Shine & Stern and TBWA Chiat/Day. His native Japanese language skills, extensive knowledge of Japanese culture, and penchant for close-cropped hairstyles eventually led him to a creative director’s position at Leo Burnett Tokyo (now known as Beacon Communications) where he worked with clients such as Philip Morris, Ricoh, P&G, and Polaroid. At the time, good work, let alone award winning work was unheard of in LB Tokyo. But he helped change all that. Aside from numerous local awards, his team’s work on Bounty Paper Towels is still one of the very few campaigns by P&G in Asia to have won numerous prestigious international awards in the best campaign category.
In 2002, Patrick joined Hakuhodo as the regional creative director for Asia (Hakuhodo ABS). In this role, Patrick worked with local offices in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Beijing, and Singapore for clients such as Toyota, Panasonic, Suzuki motorcycles, and Kao. He led the regional team in winning the Toyota Fortuner business against Dentsu, and went on to create a tremendously successful launch in SE Asia. In 2005, Patrick joined Lowe as ECD of the Jakarta office, handling Unilever, Ajinomoto, Bank Niaga, not to mention winning new business such as Jakarta Post, XL Telecommunications, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and URC snacks. Within a year under his watch, Lowe Jakarta went from being the 15th awarded agency in the market to the 3rd. What’s more, most of the work was done by the staff and not himself (Now that, folks, is leadership). By that time, Patrick (and staff) had won just about every award out there save the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 2007, Paul Grubb of Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters recognized Patrick’s talent for doing and teaching and asked him to relocate to Bangkok and help him build Lowe’s regional creative team. Together they took the OMO global account from right underneath BBH’s nose and did the same thing with Close-Up from JWT. Patrick also led the Lowe office in Shanghai to win the Reebok account in China. Reebok gave Lowe Shanghai the business right there on the spot for an idea of Patrick’s which revolved around a single event: the notoriously tall NBA star Yao Ming returning to a China where everything literally had grown in size, making him look smaller. Titled “Small Yao”, this was considered to be one of the most successful integrated campaigns in China to this day. During this time, a few people in Toyota Motors Corporation were asking their agencies where Patrick Plutschow was, and to bring him back immediately regardless through which agency (Dentsu or Hakuhodo) for an important launch in China. Patrick rejoined Hakuhodo, led the agency to win the Highlander account, and together with the team, created what Toyota China deemed to be one of their most successful car launches in Toyota China’s history.
In 2009, Patrick returned to Tokyo to join Saatchi & Saatchi / Fallon as ECD. Within the first 6 months, him and his team produced an extremely successful viral video for Reebok's Taikan Performance Wear. They had hoped to gain 100,000 views within 6 weeks but instead generated 134,000 views the first day. By the 6th week it had reached 1.6 million views. In addition to the YouTube viewings, the video was also picked up by the majority of the TV stations' news and entertainment shows and many magazines. Even Japanese celebrities posted this viral onto their blog without Reebok’s endorsement. These generated approximately 550 million yen (USD 66 million) worth of exposure. It was the second most viewed video in Japan for 2010 on YouTube Rewind. (Visits to Reebok's Taikan product website quadrupled.) Not bad for a campaign with a total budget of only 18 million yen (USD 216,000).
Patrick is not only recognized for his uncanny ability to make the dramatic changes necessary to put an office on the map. He has won numerous awards as a director and as a music producer. He is also a bicycle enthusiast and has one of the most reknown vintage track bike collections in the world.