Joan, the agency launched in May by Lisa Clunie (Ogilvy, Refinery29) and Jaime Robinson (W+K, Pereira & O’Dell) named Alex Kalluf chief data officer in its first official hiring announcement this week. Its first work for Netflix also debuted during the Emmys on Sunday.
Regarding its newest full-time team member, Clunie said:
“Alex has an incredibly diverse background which, coupled with his depth of experience in data analytics and creative spirit, was something we just couldn’t pass up. We felt that Alex’s understanding of market research and industry trends gives him a great edge. He can identify opportunities and cultural connections, coupled with the kind of thinking that challenges the status quo. What can we say – he is a Joan!”
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The shop does have a small staff of both full-time and freelance employees in New York, but Kalluf’s hire makes its dedication to numbers official as he will work “to help shape Joan’s data analytics practice and overall approaches to irregular thinking.”
This fits with Joan’s status as a more flexible operation given to project-based work, social media and related projects for its clients, which currently include General Mills and Netflix. As Clunie told us at Cannes this year, “We don’t have account people and planners in the traditional way: We have blurry lines. A lot of the people we’re meeting are Swiss Army Knives, and that’s better for us.”
Prior to joining Joan, Kalluf was senior director of intelligence and analytics at New York’s Figliulo&Partners, where he spent two and a half years after holding similar positions at Neo@Ogilvy, iCrossing and GroupM and managing modeling projects for such clients as Amazon and Mazda. Earlier in his career, he spent several years in research-based roles at Millward Brown and WPP’s Kantar Media.