Copywriter Ryan Raab and art director Dan Kenneally, who helped create some of Droga5’s most acclaimed campaigns over the past two years, joined BBDO New York last month as its newest creative directors.
Raab has moved upward in the agency world at a rapid pace since beginning his career as a copywriting intern at Carmichael Lynch and Saatchi & Saatchi. He joined Crispin Porter + Bogusky (then in one of its earlier incarnations) in 2008 and became one in a long line of creatives who touched the post-Subservient Chicken Burger King account.
Prior to joining Droga5, he spent two years at Mother New York, where he worked on Virgin Mobile, Google and others (including BK).
Raab and Kenneally moved to BBDO as a team after developing a working partnership at Droga5, which they joined at the same time in 2013.
Kenneally served as senior art director at Droga5 after working in-house at Venables Bell and Partners and Anomaly and freelancing for various agencies/clients. He also works as an instructor at New York’s School of Visual Arts.
An agency rep tells us that the two will report to ECDs Chris Beresford-Hill and Dan Lucey and that they will work on the accounts within those leaders’ respective groups.
You may recall that the pair appeared on the cover of Adweek’s “Ads of the Year” issue from December 2014 alongside Droga5’s Ted Royer and Scott Bell. The praise in that case concerned the “If We Made It” campaign for Newcastle, and the team also worked on this year’s Super Bowl ads in addition to the Clearasil, Johnsonville and Jockey accounts.
Weeks before the Adweek story ran in 2014, Raab and Kenneally earned another of advertising’s not-quite-top honors: a mention on Mashable’s “15 rising stars” list. The pair told Mashable that they take inspiration from “anything that feels new, risky, and a little bit ‘wrong’ for a brand to be doing.”
That’s a fairly accurate summary of Droga’s driving aesthetic, and the two recalled a quote from GCD Bell to re-emphasize their point:
“…great advertising should feel like you’re getting away with something …If our legal department gets involved, we know we’re probably onto something.”
AgencySpy readers may agree to disagree.