NEW YORK Will Travis, a partner at Attik who helped guide the U.K. company's push into the United States, is taking a business development post at Dentsu America Group, which acquired the digital and design consultancy last October.
 
Formerly Attik's president, Travis, 39, becomes svp at Dentsu. In addition to international marketing and prospecting on behalf of Dentsu America, Travis is tasked with expanding relationships with global clients like Toyota and Canon.

"Will's a very energetic guy who will bring a new flavor and attitude. He'll help cross-pollinate within the group," said Dentsu America CEO Tim Andree. "Attik's doing very well and it made sense to elevate him to a wider role at Dentsu."
 
Travis is the latest addition to Andree's team since the former Canon exec and agency client became the first American CEO of the Tokyo-based ad giant's U.S. operations.

Earlier this year, Andree -- noting that 25 percent of Dentsu America's business is now interactive -- recruited Digitas acd Lawrence Orleck as interactive cd. (Mike Wilson, an Ogilvy & Mather group creative head, was Andree's first big hire in December 2006 when he was added as CCO.)
 
Travis -- who has climbed Vinson Massif in the Antarctic and motorbiked the world's highest road through the Himalayas -- will now tackle one of his biggest challenges yet: working with Andree to build a heightened domestic profile and credibility for Dentsu, which has never been a significant U.S. player despite having a 30-year presence in the market.
 
"Tim believes Dentsu will go from being an extension of a Japanese [shop] to a well-known American agency known for great work," Travis said.
 
The addition of Attik (which operates as an independent firm within Dentsu) doubled the size of Dentsu America and added expertise in digital and alternative media and a focus on the Gen-Y demographic.

Attik was founded as a graphic design firm in Huddersfield, England, in 1986 by Simon Needham and James Sommerville. The former sidewalk artists, who retain top roles at the agency to this day, chose the moniker because they set up shop in the attic of Sommerville's grandmother's house.
 
But it was Travis, also from Northern England, who provided the business acumen. He opened a New York outpost for the shop in 1997, which would be followed two years later by an office in San Francisco that became Attik's flagship.



Travis didn't have any business contacts when he arrived in the states, so he spent six months pitching prospects at the British Chamber of Commerce, plumbing family connections and using a Yellow Pages he purloined from a U.S. hotel room.

He lined up about $250,000 in business to fund Attik's first year of rent and opened with assignments from Simon & Schuster, NBC and Columbia Tri-Star.

Today, Attik's U.S. roster includes cellphone company Boost, Taco Bell, Lexus and Sheraton Hotels. In its U.K. office in Leeds, the shop works for Heineken, Coca-Cola and Adidas. (Dentsu's key U.S. clients include Canon, HarperCollins, Sage Software, Bandai Toys and Newton Vineyards.)

Andree can use the help of colleagues like Travis. The CEO is currently in Japan becoming an executive officer at Dentsu Inc., making him the first non-Japanese to join the top ranks of the firm.

Indeed, sources familiar with Dentsu see Andree's appointment as a sign that the holding company is getting serious about becoming more international and that Andree will play a larger role in that process. He is expected to make additional acquisitions to help build the company's resources in the States.

CLICK HERE TO READ NOREEN O'LEARY'S IN-DEPTH FEATURE ON DENTSU.