Droga5 New York has pilfered the ranks of some top New York agencies including BBDO and McCann, thereby boosting its creative department with the arrival of six creative directors and a design director. The news was noted in today’s LBB press release reprint.
Jillian Goger, Ryan Raab, Jake Shaw, Ray Smiling, Matt Swinburne and Ash Tavassoli recently joined the shop in creative director roles, while Michael Kleinman became its newest design director.
Goger, who will focus on the Pizza Hut account the agency won in May, joins Droga5 from McCann New York. She spent nearly 10 years there and worked her way up from ACD to creative director and then group creative director, working with brands such as Dentyne, USPS, MasterCard, Verizon, Army, United Way and the New York Lottery. Prior to joining McCann, she spent six years as a copywriter with Arnold New York and worked on brands such as Hasbro and Nicorette.
Swinburne, who is also working on the Pizza Hut account, also joins Droga5 from McCann New York, where he has served as a creative director since February of 2015. Before joining McCann, he served as a creative director with Silver + Partners and spent time at Saatchi & Saatchi, The Brooklyn Brothers and Mother London after working at Leo Burnett Sydney in his native Australia.
Shaw will focus on the Chase account after arriving at the agency from BBDO New York, where he had served as an associate creative director since July of 2011. Over the course of his time with BBDO in the U.S. and Germany, he worked on campaigns for clients including PepsiCo, Mercedes Benz, GE and Visa.
Tavassaoli will also focus on Chase after moving over from BBDO New York, where he was associate creative director on the MLB, Visa, GE,Campbell’s, Mountain Dew, AT&T, FedEx and M&Ms accounts. Earlier gigs include two years as a senior copywriter with kbs+, where he worked with BMW, Intel and … Justin Bieber?
Smiling was a copywriter on adidas at 72andSunny for the past year, and he will now focus on Under Armour. Prior to entering the ad industry via R/GA’s Beats by Dre team, he was a designer at Rockstar Games and “worked in the streetwear scene for two years” as a creative director with Mishka NYC.
We wrote about Raab returning to the agency after a year with BBDO earlier this month. During his first stint at Droga5, he was a senior copywriter working on Newcastle, Clearasil and Johnsonville.
Design director Michael Kleinman will focus on Droga’s Google account. He arrives following over a year at AnalogFolk and previously worked as design director at the now-shuttered Droga5 Sydney office. Over the course of his career he has worked with brands including McDonald’s and Oscar Mayer and held additional jobs at JWT, Tribal DDB and Razorfish in Australia.
These hires were made possible by recent new business wins including Chase Sapphire, Pizza Hut, Trident, AB InBev’s Best Damn, Google’s Pixel and (allegedly!) a few more that we can’t list here.