It seems like there’s been an executive creative director hiring spree this week as Ogilvy is the latest to announce that it’s added more senior creatives to its New York office, namely Heavy.com co-founder David Carson and award-winning Saatchi & Saatchi alum, Alison Gragnano.
Carson, whose duties will include partnering with fellow ECD Chris Mitton and leading teams on such clients as American Express, IKEA and Stoli, helped launch music network Fuse among other efforts. In a statement, the man who actually served as CD at Ogilvy on the IBM e-business during the late 90’s says, “I’m pretty excited to join Ogilvy at a time when emerging media has gone mass. A-list brands are chomping at the bit to leverage new channels of communication. It’s an enormous opportunity.”
Gragnano, meanwhile, will work on Unilever and Kimberly-Clark business. During her four years at Saatchi, she moved her way up to global CD status while working for brands like General Mills and P&G. Gragnano was part of the Crest team that won Gold at Cannes for the “You Can Say Anything With a Smile” campaign.
On the IBM front, Ogilvy also increased staff with the addition of ex-Crispin creative Jason Marks as GCD, TBWA\Digital Arts alum Howard Pyle as global director of digital platforms and former 180 Amsterdam head of digital production Pierre Wendling as executive producer.