McCann expanded its executive creative leadership team in New York with a pair of new hires and senior leadership promotions.
Executive creative directors Dan Donovan and Wayne Best have been promoted to roles as deputy chief creative officers. Andrea Gustafson joins the agency as design director and Gabrielle Shirdan arrives as a creative director. Collectively this team will share creative oversight of the agency’s dedicated Verizon unit.
“We are thrilled to have talent of the level of Wayne, Andrea and Gabrielle become part of our McCann creative family, and to promote Dan into his expanded role,” McCann New York co-CCOs Sean Bryan and Thomas Murphy said in a statement. “Dan has been behind some of our most award-winning work in recent years, from Lockheed to Army to the most recent Verizon work for First Responders. We could not be prouder to watch him turn into such a great creative leader.”
Donovan (pictured: sitting, left) re-joined McCann nearly four years ago as executive creative director, following over three years with CP+B. While at CP+B he worked as a creative director and then executive creative director on the agency’s Microsoft, Charles Schwab, Hotels.com and MetLife accounts. He first joined McCann as a creative assistant in 1998 and worked his way up to senior vice president, group creative director before leaving for CP+B in 2012.
Best (pictured: standing, right) joined McCann back in September. After around two and a half years as an executive creative director with JWT New York, he left to co-found Cog in 2010. Prior to JWT, he spent time with Taxi and Fallon in creative director roles.
Shirdan (pictured: standing, left) joins McCann from 72andSunny New York, where she spent over a year and a half as creative director, working with brands including New Era, Nature Valley, Adobe and Smirnoff Ice. Before that she spent nearly a year and a half as associate creative director at Spike DDB, following a brief stint in an associate creative director role for ab+C and nearly six years as an art director and associate creative director for LevLane. Over the course of her career, she has worked with brands including Cadillac, JBL, NYPD, AARP and the AdCouncil.
Gustafson (pictured: sitting, right) arrives at McCann following around a year and a half as a freelance creative director, following stints as a creative director with R/GA and adidas, and as a design director for Havas. Earlier in her career she spent two years as an art director/senior designer with Anomaly and four years as head of design for Johannes Leonardo. In 2010, she worked on the design of the Canadian Olympic team uniform and retail collection, and earned a Cannes Grand Prix for Diesel’s “Be Stupid” campaign.