Innovative Thunder is a creative team for innovative marketing solutions. Currently Thunder, alias Leif Abraham and Christian Behrendt, work as an Associate Creative Director team with AdWeek’s Digital Agency of the Decade and the creators of Nike+, R/GA New York. Here, they create worldwide campaigns and platforms for brands like MasterCard and Nike.

Before that, Thunder was the Lead Interactive team at the Activision/Guitar Hero account with AdAge’s Agency of the Decade, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky in Boulder, Colorado, where they created the launch campaign of the video game “DJ Hero”. Apart from that, Thunder worked with CP+B for brands like Best Buy, Volkswagen and Burger King Germany. And because the job title of the ‘Concept Creative’ doesn’t exist in the US, their business cards just said ‘Innovative Thunder’.

Leif and Christian met at Germany’s Hotshop Jung von Matt in Hamburg, where they created campaigns for brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Sixt rent a car and the TV series, Lost. With JvM alone, Thunder has won more than 90 national and international awards. They were part of the team that made Jung von Matt Worldwide Agency of the Year 2007 (The BigWon) as well as for the first time Interactive Agency of the Year 2007 and 2008 (Horizont).

Before his agency life Christian worked as a marketing manager for domestic and international Pop, Dance and Techno artists such as Peaches, Scooter and Brooklyn Bounce. Under Christian’s supervision, Brooklyn Bounce became Sony Music/Germany’s most successful national artist in 2001, a success for which he received a Gold Record. One year later, Christian became Head of Beat Department at Warner Music/Wea Germany. When the music industry’s downturn started, he decided to pass his salary, sell his car and his apartment and move back to his parent’s house in order to switch to another industry. He won a scholarship from the Miami Ad School and started after a successful graduation in 2005, his second career with Jung von Matt where he met Leif, and their joint creative romance began.

Leif created various Internet projects for several years, from one of Germany’s biggest gaming networks with more than 8 million page impressions per month down to managing several affiliate marketing projects. Based on his experience and expertise on the digital field, Leif started off with Jung von Matt at the age of 19 and became the agency’s youngest employee at the time.

Since 2010, Leif & Christian are teaching the class 'Pop-Culture Engineering' at the Miami Ad School, New York.

www.InnovativeThunder.com

Write us: team (at) knarre.com

Follow us on Twitter: @innothunder

LinkedIn: Christian & Leif