The Bay Area office of Grey Group marked an expansion this week with several executive-level additions to its team, chiefly on the strategy and media sides of its business.
Lenny Karpel will be director of brand strategy and Brian Lombardo will be VP, director of quantitative strategy, effective immediately. They join from Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, respectively. The two will serve as co-leads of Grey’s new Insights & Investments group, which aims to consolidate the office’s digital strategy, media and measurement teams into one.
“Lenny and Brian bring a wealth of experience driving integrated strategy for world class brands,” said Grey S.F. president Milan Martin. “Most importantly, they don’t play by the old rules of advertising. They’re both driven to push beyond the traditional definitions to create work that adds value to people’s lives.”
Beyond those two hires, Grey also hired George Joost, former VP/director of finance at twofifteenmccann, to serve as its chief financial officer and named Daniel Tuggle, who had been head of production at Cutwater, as director of integrated production.
“They both are outstanding additions to our team,” said Martin, adding, “Daniel is instantly ‘one of us’ producing work in smart, efficient and beautiful ways. And I couldn’t ask for a better finance partner than George to help the management team continue to grow Grey and responsibly manage our clients’ money.”
On the media side, Taylor Wynne and Abe Snyder joined Grey San Francisco as group media directors; they were formerly VP, media director at Havas Media S.F. and marketing consultant at area photo production startup Blink, Inc.
Regarding the new media hires, SVP Ryan Miller said, “They understand that the old mentality of simply buying reach/frequency is no longer a fruitful path to fame or fortune. There’s simply too much noise, distraction and fragmentation. Both think like creative media strategists and have a proven track record of leading highly collaborative, cross-discipline teams to deliver breakthrough campaigns for world class brands.”
We hear that the hires came about because the San Francisco team simply needed more talent to handle its various responsibilities. The office has won a few new accounts over the past year-plus including UCHealth, Lending Tree, Pernod-Ricard’s Graffigna wine and Sun Edison.