-By Andrew McMains

NEW YORK Saatchi & Saatchi New York CCO Gerry Graf this week added a creative director and two associate creative directors to his 80-person creative department.

The cd, Manny Galan, fills a vacancy left by the exit of Pete Johnson. Johnson oversaw creative efforts for Saatchi's Youth Connection unit, which focuses primarily on the shop's General Mills business. Chief among the Big G brands that Saatchi handles are Cheerios, Pillsbury and Yoplait.

Before Publicis Groupe's Saatchi, Galan was director of content at Nickelodeon in New York, overseeing on-air branding and advertising. Earlier in his career, he was an illustrator and a writer for Marvel Comics Group.

Indeed, his eclectic background (Galan also has worked at New York shop Griffin Bacal) and a recommendation from Johnson made him stand out to Graf, who became CCO in February. What's more, Graf deadpanned, "He sent me comic books when I hired him."

The new associate creative directors, Chris Beresford-Hill and Nick Spahr, will partner at Saatchi, as they did at their previous agency, Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. They're expected to work across Saatchi's entire client roster, though initially they'll focus on Procter & Gamble and General Mills.

"Whenever I see an opportunity to do something new or different, they're going to start working on it," said Graf.

At Goodby, Beresford-Hill, a copywriter, and Spahr, an art director, created some quirky, comical work for Comcast and Emerald Nuts. Beresford-Hill also worked on Hewlett-Packard, the WNBA and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Before Goodby, Beresford-Hill was a copywriter at independent shop Modernista! in Boston, working on brands such as Hummer, Napster and Animal Planet. Spahr came to Goodby from independent Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco, where he was an art director on HBO Home Video, Robert Mondavi and Barclays.

Galan, 36, started on Thursday, and Beresford-Hill, 28, and Spahr, 35, began on Monday. The office's creative department now has four creative directors and 10 associate creative directors.