KesselsKramer Opens Los Angeles Office WHEN agencies based in Europe decide to make the big leap into the United States, they typically open their first office in New York, the nation's largest ad market and the symbolic heart of the industry. Now, a European agency that likes to consider itself a rule-breaker is coming to America by opening clear across its new country, in Los Angeles. The agency, KesselsKramer, was founded in Amsterdam in 1996 and opened a London office in 2008. Its arrival in the United States, in an office in the Chinatown section of downtown Los Angeles, is being announced this week after a so-called soft launch over the summer. KesselsKramer Los Angeles is opening with about 16 employees who are working for three clients: Ubisoft Entertainment, for the coming introduction of the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist video game; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for its new MOCAtv channel on YouTube; and a liquor brand that the agency is not ready to identify. As an aspect of its work, KesselsKramer Los Angeles is creating video clips to help the museum introduce its channel on YouTube - part of an initiative by the YouTube division of Google to offer television-style channels with original entertainment content. The agency, for example, created "Love/Hate Graffiti" for MOCAtv's "Art in the Streets" series. That work is emblematic of why the leaders of KesselsKramer chose to open the office in Los Angeles rather than New York or another American market: among the tasks in which the agency will specialize is content creation, in realms that include the artistic as well as what is known as branded entertainment, or storytelling that integrates products into plot lines. "If you look at the all the creative disciplines" that marketers increasingly want their agencies to be proficient in, "what better place to be than Los Angeles?" said Engin Celikbas, partner and managing director at KesselsKramer, who works from Amsterdam and London. "The United States was always on our list" for expansion, Mr. Celikbas said. "And when you think "U.S.," you think New York." "But we as a company always try to push boundaries," he added, particularly as a "challenger" agency - that is, one hired by clients who want to take on larger competitors that are leaders in the category in which they compete. "As a challenger, we need the opportunity to tell our story," Mr. Celikbas said, and "the first impression we have from L.A." is that it is "an extremely open, inviting, curious, city, eager to hear what you have to say." He contrasted that with London, which he described as a "market that is much more closed, extremely difficult to crack." Another reason for Los Angeles, Mr. Celikbas said, was that KesselsKramer is "getting more and more jobs from Asia, and Los Angeles will be involved in our international business." KesselsKramer Los Angeles is being led by three executives with experience in fields like branded entertainment, social media, interactive marketing and production as well as advertising. They are Eric Barrett, 51, partner and managing director; David Charles, 32, partner and executive creative director; and Robert Fagan, 47, partner and head of integrated production. Mr. Charles was a creative director at 72andSunny, a Los Angeles agency owned by MDC Partners. He said a mutual friend introduced him to Mr. Barrett and Mr. Fagan, who was a founder of 42 Entertainment, a company in Pasadena, Calif., that specializes in alternate-reality games. Mr. Charles, who knows the partners at KesselsKramer, introduced everyone to each other, and soon the plans for the office were firmed up. Serendipitously, as Mr. Charles told it, Mr. Barrett, who ran his own production company in Los Angeles, Mirror Films, had purchased an office building in Chinatown known as "the Happy Lion building," so named for what had been a gift shop there in the "50s. "The London building where KesselsKramer is has an art gallery in front of it, so when I saw this I said, "Oh my god, this is KesselsKramer," " Mr. Charles said. And we've made the entrance to the ground floor a gallery, with exhibits that will change every two months. The office's location was a selling point for the museum, according to John Toba, head of production at MOCAtv. Mr. Toba and Emma Reeves, creative director at MOCAtv, "have talked a lot about MOCA being a downtown Los Angeles institution," Mr. Toba said. We wanted to let people know we're beaming at you from Los Angeles. And Mr. Toba praised the KesselsKramer office for being able to "understand our sensibility" as it consulted with the museum on the strategy to introduce MOCAtv. "We're talking to them about how to fold user-generated content into what we're doing," he added, "and they've been very helpful in thinking that through." Also, "we're achieving our goals for the content" on the channel and have been "getting great numbers" since it went live on Oct. 1, Mr. Toba said, adding: "We just had a million views. And now we're going for 10. For as good a start as the office seems to be having, Mr. Celikbas of KesselsKramer acknowledged how daunting a challenge it can be for a non-American agency to open a United States office. "We toyed with it in the late "90s, but it wasn't right," Mr. Celikbas said. Now, we've found kindred spirits with the same ambition, and we're connecting at the right time.