Mother Poaches Creative Talent From 72andSunny to Staff Its New L.A. Office

By Patrick Coffee 

As we noted last month, Mother is indeed opening a new office in Los Angeles—and it has made a series of hires to staff that location while also naming a couple of new employees in New York.

First, Michael Jacovides joins the New York team as lead creative on the Target account. He has been freelancing in London for several years after working a global creative director at Grey London. Jacovides started his career in journalism and brings a combined knowledge of fashion and design to Manhattan to head the Target team.

Danielle Horanieh has also joined the New York division of Mother Design, the agency’s in-house unit, as managing director. She previously spent more than six years with Wolff Olins in New York and helped launch their San Francisco office while working with such clients as Google, Spotify and Nike.

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On the California side, Mother hired several new employees in creative, accounts and management roles.

  • Romain Naegelen will serve as managing director of the new office after spending more than a year with Hustle, R/GA’s dedicated Beats unit. He has more than 10 years’ experience working internationally and spent time at TBWA offices in Hong Kong, Miami and L.A.
  • Maite Albuquerque has also joined Mother L.A. as a creative director after working at 72andSunny as senior designer, ACD/art director handling such clients as Google and Target. She entered the ad industry in her native Brazil before moving to Sponge Chicago, StrawberryFrog and Ogilvy.
  • Creative director Will Tran also comes from 72andSunny, where he was a senior copywriter on Google, Activision and other accounts; he started his career as a visual artist and, like Albuquerque, spent time at StrawberryFrog before heading west.
  • Yet another 72andSunny veteran, Clare Jensen, is now an art director at Mother L.A. after spending several years with the MDC organization on Instagram, Adidas and Sonos.
  • Writer Taylor Black spent more than 4 years with 72 and founded Black Einstein Films, which is “dedicated to creating artistic social commentary.”
  • Finally, Eric Reilly will work as an account manager focusing on clients including Netflix, Westfield and Headspace. He formerly handled the Boost Mobile account for 180LA and left that shop in a wave of departures following the ASICS review news late last year.

In addition to these hires, “senior mother” Will Flood and strategist Juliet Cilia have also transferred to L.A. from New York, which parted ways with an unknown number of staffers over the holiday season in response to the changing needs of some unnamed clients.

How did Mother manage to hire so many people away from 72andSunny, and where is the new revenue coming from? That’s not clear—but as partner Paul Malmstrom put it last month, “New York weather this time of year is brutal, and we’re tired of flying to see our lovely clients on the west coast.”

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