NEW YORK John Doyle has joined McCann Erickson as executive creative director.
Doyle, 53, is spearheading the development of the New York agency’s Design and Brand Innovation Group, which the shop envisions as a five-member team that will boost its design capabilities.
“We talked about bringing a design director into the agency and we realized we needed more than that,” said Joyce King Thomas, chief creative officer at McCann. “Communication has gotten so visual, brands are really built on a look and feel now more than ever. We wanted to bring in a group of people who could help us develop integrated looks for clients.”
Thomas said Doyle would also work on new business, as well as on accounts like MasterCard, ExxonMobil and Intel.
Doyle, who joined McCann yesterday, has already hired the first two members of his team: Luke and Isaiah Takahashi, who worked with Doyle at Y&R in Irvine, Calif., where he was executive creative director. The pair will work remotely from Southern California and both take the title of designer.
“McCann has some great brands,” said Doyle, “and I think they have the capacity to appropriate many of the areas that I’m interested in, all the touch points of a brand, whether it’s the design of their space or their central ad campaign.”
Before joining McCann, Doyle had been working with Labyrinth Worldwide, a creative network he developed when he left Y&R in 2004. “I want to take the same philosophy of Labyrinth to McCann, to explore as many new channels of brand reshaping and rebuilding as possible and to invite into the process as many resources as we can,” he said.
Doyle began his career in Boston, working at Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos and Mullen, where his work for Timberland (“Boots, Shoes, Clothing. Wind, Water, Earth & Sky”) began to get the art director noticed.
In 1990, he opened his own shop, Doyle Advertising & Design Group, which was later merged into Andy Berlin’s New York agency to form Berlin Cameron Doyle. From there, he joined Ogilvy & Mather, working on IBM and Kodak, and moved to San Francisco in 1996 when he joined what is now Publicis & Hal Riney. There, he created the Emmy-nominated launch campaign for the first electric car, GM’s EV1, and later worked on Sprint.
“John is an incredibly conceptual art director,” said King Thomas, who hopes his expertise will help improve the agency’s overall print work. “I know his work, and I know he’s not a type designer. He’s a conceptual person who believes in amazing design.”
Doyle Spearheads McCann Design
