LOS ANGELES Creative director Mark Taylor is moving from MDC Partners' Crispin Porter + Bogusky to Omnicom Group's GSD&M Idea City as executive creative director. Taylor said he expects to start at the end of March.
"It is a natural fit," said Taylor. "Idea City wants to get into approaching a business problem in a way that might be different than just advertising. That's the direction we're going in."
At Crispin, Taylor worked mostly as an art director on BMW's Mini, Miller High Life, Nike and Volkswagen. He was an art director on Crispin's Cannes Grand Prix-winning 2002 "Lamp" commercial for Ikea, and more recently worked on the Cannes 2007 Titanium Grand Prix-winning Xbox games campaign for Burger King.
In 2005-06, Taylor was a co-creative director with Roger Camp at Fallon, Minneapolis, where he worked on Brawny. He returned to Crispin's Boulder, Colo., office as vice president, associate creative director in 2006.
Taylor said he "always admired the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit behind an agency that has made such a mark so far from Madison Avenue. They're mavericks and have built their agency by adding value as true business partners with their clients."
Duff Stewart, president and COO of GSD&M, Austin, Texas, to whom Taylor reports, said in a statement that Taylor is "a creative leader who embodies our client-focused heritage and understands the vision of Idea City, to become the best in the world at delivering visionary ideas that make a difference."
"Creativity is one aspect," Taylor said. "And we need to execute as well as we can, but it takes the whole machine to make it happen. In other words, creativity is great, but until we have applied the results, we haven't succeeded."
Taylor will oversee creative for all GSD&M clients, including Southwest Airlines, BMW, MasterCard, John Deere, AT&T Real Yellow Pages, Kohler, PGA Tour, AARP, American Red Cross, Hallmark, Yellow Pages, Yellowpages.com, NCL, Lennox and the U.S. Air Force.
