McCann Reshapes Production Leadership Team

McCann Worldgroup is furthering its push to broaden its production services with new leadership changes, including a new role and a reunion. The network promoted Nathy Aviram to the newly created position of chief production officer for creative production unit Craft North America, while retaining responsibilities as chief production officer for McCann North America. McCann also hired Aaron Kovan, who is returning to the agency take on Aviram's former role of chief production officer for McCann New York. McCann's leadership appointments reflect a desire to capitalize on client demand for more comprehensive production services to meet brand's marketing needs. "Increasingly, we're seeing growth and opportunities with clients and prospects to evolve how we deliver for them, all the way from ideation and creative development to execution," Chris Macdonald, who McCann promoted to chairman and CEO at the start of the year, told Adweek. Macdonald explained that the move was about formalizing the approach to evolving creative production and ensuring the right leaders were in the right roles to drive that evolution. Aviram will be responsible for continuing to evolve production services as lines blur between creative ideation, content planning and execution, working closely with creative leadership. During his tenure as McCann New York chief production officer over the past seven years, Aviram has overseen production for clients including Mastercard, Microsoft, New York Lottery, State Street Global Advisors and Verizon Fios. Speaking to Adweek, Aviram expressed a desire to bring innovation to the role of production in his new role. "Those innovations are going to be on all different platforms. The innovation could be as simple as how we attack storytelling. There hasn't been an agency production model that has been able to produce those types of things," he explained. "We plan to [continue building] a successful model that's going to bring creativity into everything we do." A homecoming Kovan returns to McCann following three years as chief production officer for VaynerMedia. "I had a great run at VaynerMedia and learned a ton about different platforms, and [I] hope to bring the production knowledge I learned on those platforms to McCann," Kovan said, calling the decision to return to McCann an easy one. "It’s like going back to family … They’re the best creative shop in the industry right now. I always want to be with the best creatives and best leaders." One of the first hires made by Aviram after joining McCann from Y&R over seven years ago, Kovan served as evp, head of integrated production for McCann's M:United and helped found in-house live production unit Craft Studios before leaving for VaynerMedia in 2018. "Aaron’s gone off and done all sorts of innovative stuff across surprising platforms in different ways," McCann North America co-CCO Sean Bryan added. "Now we're excited he’s ready to come home and bring some of that new learning to McCann in the biggest way possible." What to Expect in Post-Pandemic Production After a Year That Altered Almost Everything Investing in creating more enviable moments As McCann moves to meet client demands for more content across platforms, Macdonald stressed that it was about more than just increasing how many creative assets it can deliver; it was also about ensuring creative is effective and delivers on authentic brand purpose. Aviram explained that McCann is investing in further building the production team in the coming months, while more closely aligning production with creative and strategy to become part of conversations earlier in the creative process. "Traditionally, production is brought into the picture after the script is approved by the client," Aviram told Adweek. "That's no longer feasible with how quickly we need to move." "We want to be thinking about how you infuse creativity end-to-end throughout process," Macdonald added. "They're helping creative think differently about how and where ideas live from the beginning." McCann's creative production has long been a strength, so building up such capabilities when clients need more content than ever is a natural move for the agency network. "The whole production community has been amazing at bringing innovative problem solving to whatever the idea is," McCann North America co-CCO Sean Bryan told Adweek, citing the range exemplified across "Fearless Girl," a "Field Trip to Mars" and "True Name." "We want to hit more of those 'I wish I'd done that' moments," he added.