This week, Grey Group named Peter Viento to the ECD role at the New York offices of GreyShopper, its shopper marketing unit.
Viento was previously ECD at Colangelo Synergy Marketing in Connecticut, but in recent years he also spent time as a creative director with Ogilvy and Saatchi & Saatchi X, another shopper operation. (After leaving Saatchi in a wave of layoffs in late 2011, he told us that he’d landed at the New York offices of MARS.)
Viento is not the only creative to leave Colangelo in recent months: in February, we reported that Dave Clemans–formerly of CP+B, GS&P and more–would no longer be ECD. At the time, tipsters told us that Colangelo’s creative department was going through an upheaval of sorts. Sources now claim that Viento’s move coincided with budgetary issues and that ECD Ben Applebaum, who has been with Colangelo for more than a decade, will be running creative operations in its Darien, Connecticut office following his departure.
Here’s the memo on Viento’s hire from Grey Global CEO of Shopper Marketing Joe Lampertius.
Please welcome our newest addition to the GreyShopper team. Peter Viento. ECD for GreyShopper NY.
He’s a creative guy who is all about the work that drives brand love & effective results. Sound familiar?
His primary role is to build a world class shopper creative team integrated within Grey NY & Global for the P&G Grooming business.
He will work closely with Leo & Jeff in Grey NY, Matt in Grey Shopper London and other key offices to ensure our creative teams work seamlessly across markets.
Throughout his career he has been fortunate enough to work on the most iconic brands in the world at some of the best creative agencies in NY. He joins us most recently from Colangelo, an Omnicom shopper/activation agency. He led through-the-line initiatives for every DIAGEO brand in North America, Imperial Tobacco, and Church & Dwight.
Before that he worked at Saatchi X on P&G and General Mills brands and at Ogilvy Action on Unilever and J&J brands for a number of years. He started his career at J Brown which became G2, so just another example on how circular the world can be. We’re very fortunate to have such an awarded shopper creative person join our NY team.
Please welcome & congratulate Peter to the Grey team!