Deutsch North America chief digital officer Winston Binch announced yesterday that the agency had appointed Trevor O’Brien as partner, chief technology officer of Deutsch New York and promoted Pam Scheideler to the role of partner, chief digital officer at Deutsch L.A. from her previous role as executive vice president, executive director. She will continue to report to Binch.
In the new position, O’Brien will lead the New York office’s technology team while reporting to Binch and Deutsch New York CEO Val DiFebo. O’Brien will work across all accounts while also focusing on building partnerships and relationships with tech start-ups in both New York and Silicon Valley. He joins the agency from small design and technology studio The Experiment, where he was co-founder and technologist. The appointment marks a return to the agency for him, as he served as executive creative technology officer at Deutsch L.A. from 2011-2014. He has also worked for McKinney and for startups Motobias and Roobrik. Over the course of his career he has worked with brands including Nike, Taco Bell, Volkswagen, PlayStation, Nintendo, Virgin and Bank of America.
“Trevor’s one of the best technologists in the business,” Binch told LBB. “He knows the industry and has remarkable entrepreneurial sensibilities, creative and engineering skills. He was a key figure in helping our LA office make the transition from advertising to product innovation and enterprise-level technology development. It’s great to have him back.”
Scheideler originally joined Deutsch L.A. back in March of 2013 as executive vide president, director of digital production. Prior to joining the agency she spent a year and a half at Google as head of production, Creative Lab. That followed a period of the same length at JWT as director, digital production. Before that she spent nine months as vice president, group executive producer at CP+B, following two years as executive integrated producer for the agency. Prior to joining CP+B she was a founding partner of interactive production company Fuego5.
Binch called Scheideler “a force of nature, an indispensable digital talent, and one of the smartest people that I know,” adding, “She’s been my right hand for years and has been key to the LA office’s tremendous success. Having her at the top level of the company is going to give both digital and the agency rocket boosters.”