- Andrew McMains

NEW YORK The creative leadership of two of Saatchi & Saatchi New York's key accounts has changed under chief creative officer Gerry Graf, who joined the Publicis Groupe shop six months ago.

In the past two months, Graf has replaced Kerry Keenan as creative director on JC Penney with Amie Valentine, a former group cd on Kohl's at McCann Erickson, and taken creative director worldwide Ann Hayden off of General Mills. Keenan, who had worked on Penney for about a year, has left the agency, and Hayden, who worked on Big G since 2005, will leave shortly, said sources.

Hayden's duties will be absorbed by the handful of cds that worked under her on different lines of client business, a Saatchi representative said. The agency handles brands such as Cheerios, Pillsbury and Yoplait that last year collectively spent about $475 million in major measured media, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. On Penney, whose 2007 major media spending exceeded $380 million, Saatchi is lead creative agency.

Sources said the Keenan move was related partly to June's "Speed Dressing" episode, in which a mildly risqué spot that never ran won a bronze Lion at Cannes, only to be relinquished after Penney cried foul. Saatchi blamed production company Epoch Films and director Mike Long but Long was a former cd at Saatchi who used to partner with Keenan and both were implicated in the imbroglio, said sources. Even before "Speed Dressing", however, Saatchi looked to change creative leadership on the account, said sources.