Three top executives at L.A.’s David&Goliath announced this week that they would be leaving to launch their own, as-yet-unnamed agency. AdAge reported the change yesterday, and David&Goliath has refused to comment or provide any information including headshots or a basic press release.
Chief creative officer/managing partner Colin Jeffery, chief digital officer Mike Geiger and chief strategy officer Seema Miller will all officially leave their jobs as of December 1. The three each also held managing partner titles.
In their place, agency founder and chairman David Angelo has promoted ECD Bobby Pearce to the top creative role and hired Wells Davis, former EVP/head of strategy at Leo Burnett, as his new chief strategy officer. According to our sources, Sheldon Melvin, Matt Kappler, Chris Mead and Bernice Chao were also promoted to ACD status.
Pearce joined the D&G organization last November after serving as a creative director at m:united in New York and co-founding an Atlanta-based organization called Van Winkle + Pearce. He became one of the shop’s first ECDs along with Steve Yee and Ben Purcell.
Geiger had been president and chief integration officer at JWT North America for 3 years before leaving for D&G last January; he previously held production roles at the GS&P organization. Miller came to D&G in 2013 as head of planning after holding similar strategic roles at JC Penney and Wieden + Kennedy Portland.
As is the case with most such group departures, none of the soon-to-be-former partners have shared any details regarding their upcoming venture. But we feel safe in predicting that it will amount to some variation on the creative advertising agency model.
In other recent David&Goliath developments, the shop got its preferred URL after a public stunt by Dallas-based Slingshot, which had owned davidandgoliath.com for since 1998. And in a move that may have predicted this most recent news, it also hired CP+B Miami and TBWA\Chiat\Day veteran Gustavo Sarkis to lead creative on the Kia account.
Last month it brought on Stephen Larkin from 180LA to serve as CMO, and he later spoke to Adweek about how the agency encourages its employees to face their everyday fears.
David&Goliath says it will announce new, unspecified hires soon.