So how’s your summer been so far? What have you been up to?
New York’s FCB Garfinkel hasn’t been slumming it–in fact, the agency went on something of a hiring spree over the past several months following the April appointment of new chief creative officer and former Untitled Worldwide ECD Eric Cosper. It would seem that Cosper, who served as an art director at Wieden+Kennedy and a senior creative at BBDO (among other agencies), has been very aggressive in shaping his new shop.
- Perhaps most prominently, FCB swiped Patrick Carella from neighboring DDB New York to serve as creative director. Carella spent well over a decade with DDB and Moss Dragoti, creating work for such clients as Hertz, Merck, Diet Pepsi and Bud Light. He left DDB last year right before the big executive turnover and officially joined FCB full-time in May; his past experience leads JWT CCO Matt Eastwood to call him “a trusted advisor.”
- In other creative news, Liz King joined the agency in June as a CD after spending a decade at KBS+ as an ACD/copywriter, during which time she worked on accounts including BMW, Wendy’s and Capital One.
- Copywriter/mustache enthusiast Gregory Nance also joined FCB in the associate creative role after freelancing for various agencies and working on campaigns for Diet Coke, AmEx, Head & Shoulders and more. His last FL gig before joining FCB was at Untitled, where he worked with Cosper.
- Former Grey New York art director/ACD Liem Nguyen also landed at FCB in June. Nguyen, who teaches art direction at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, spent several years at Grey working on such accounts as Mike’s Hard Lemonade, the NFL and DirecTV. He previously worked at DDB, Lowe and Publicis in New York.
- Laszlo Tibor Szloboda and Akos Papp–or the Miami Ad School Hamburg duo known for 2012’s “the toilet book“–both joined Garfinkel in July from BBDO. The two will be senior copywriter and senior art director, respectively.
- Adolfo Gutierrez and Jacqueline Soldano also scored full-time gigs as junior designer and copywriter; the former freelanced for various magazines and Atlantic records while the latter was an FCB intern.
FCB also made several hires on the accounts and strategy side:
- Ian Brown, who managed accounts for Saatchi, Ogilvy, MRM McCann and BBDO, joined the agency in May; former Grey account supervisor Anna Pogosava became an account director around the same time.
- Dan Graff will supervise digital accounts at FCB. Previous roles include account exec gigs at BBDO and Havas, and he also worked in communications at WPP’s GroupM.
- Ryan McKone joined the agency as a strategic planning director in June; he held similar positions at TBWA, JWT and Cramer-Krasselt New York.
Finally, as much as we don’t like to single out young folks who totally don’t deserve it, FCB also hired Sarah Cohen as an assistant account executive after she interned for a company whose name you may have heard recently: The Trump Organization.
Seems that Cosper has an ambitious fall planned for the shop, and he says that “this new cast of characters has added great energy to the place,” though the specific reasons behind the hiring surge are less than clear.
FCB did recently post a few new business wins including Vonage and Lincoln Financial Group, and we also expect to see new work for client SeaWorld, which has embarked on a big marketing/PR spend to counter the negative publicity still rippling from 2014 animal rights film Blackfish.
This announcement follows last week’s news that FCB West expanded its creative department by five.