It appears that the Grey New York president/CCO Tor Myhren and crew have fully embraced the title of group creative director, which the agency surprisingly never used until the appointments of Leo Savage and Jeff Stamp to said role on the Gillette biz last week. Now, another pair has assumed the position of GCD, namely five-year Grey NY vet Sean Crane and Joe Mongognia, who arrives from Deutsch NY.
Prior to Deutsch, the latter spent several years as a senior art director at JWT New York, working with clients ranging from Halls to Domino’s to Sunsilk, and also had stints as an ACD and/or CD at Ogilvy Mather London/New York. Anyhow, wouldn’t you know it, we do happen have a memo handy from Myhren that just went out to staff a short while ago and offers some nice background on Grey NY’s newest GCDs as well as their remit. Peep it after the jump.
“As you all know, the creative department is changing and evolving at a crazy pace. And as this evolution continues, I’d like to announce Sean Crane and Joe Mongognia as our newest GCDs.
Crane was one of the first people I hired at Grey. He has done great work for the NFL, Febreze, Ortega Tacos and helped run and win new business pitches like LongHorn, Sargento and the US National Parks Service. But it has been in the last year that Crane has really blossomed as a creative leader. He has taken the creative lead on a large portfolio of brands, and done an outstanding job. Crane is best known as the “Mayor of Grey”. He knows everybody, and everybody loves working with him. His ability to balance business needs with creative solutions makes him uniquely suited to run a big group. But his creative skills go well beyond advertising. In 2002, Crane spent the entire year living out of his car, as he traveled to all 50 states photographing fire hydrants. The outcome of this adventure was the coffee table book American Hydrant, published by Santa Monica Press. Since then Crane has become an award-winning wildlife photographer, being honored by the BBC, the Smithsonia!
n and the National Geographic Society. I strongly suggest checking out his popular daily blog at www.seancrane.com. Three other interesting facts about Crane:
I was his intern in Denver circa 1995.
He’s getting married tomorrow.
I wasn’t invited to the wedding.
Joe Mongognia comes to us from Deutsch, where he was running PNC Bank. His career has taken him from New York, to London, to Dusseldorf, to Chicago, and eventually back to his native New York. He has worked at two of our sister WPP agencies, Ogilvy and JWT, and produced fantastic work for big global brands like Reebok, UPS, Chase, Dominos and Cadbury, as well as iconic local brands like The Brooklyn Academy of Music. Joe grew up in Long Island, lives in Brooklyn, has a 2-year-old kid, comes from an art direction background, played catch with Joe Theisman, was dunked on by LeBron and partied with Rick Ross. With a resume like that, I think he’ll be a real nice fit here at Grey.Crane and Joe are running a group including Smucker’s, Hess, Bausch and Lomb, the US National Parks and Sargento. When you’re down on 2, come give these dudes a high five. They’re going to be great in their new roles.
Tor.”