Is it really the end of summer already? Seems like we were just getting started and suddenly it’s hurricane season and the leaves are just itching to change colors.
Speaking of change, there’s plenty of it on the agency front. The great migration of talent continues, as people switch agencies, new clients are signed and new initiatives are implemented. Come through the revolving door and see what’s changing.
AbelsonTaylor
AbelsonTaylor has promoted Laura Paul to senior account director. She will play a lead role in launching a novel treatment for recurrent C-difficile in the expanding area of microbiome therapeutics, and will also continue as team leader on two established accounts. Paul joined AbelsonTaylor in 2011.
AvatarLabs
Digital agency AvatarLabs has hired Jessica Amen as director of client services. With 17 years of experience in digital media, Jessica joins the agency from Unfold, where she served as director of production. Previously, she worked for agencies including The Refinery Creative, Known, Stink Studios and Ignition.
AvatarLabs has also promoted James Safechuck to vp, innovation and technology. He spearheads AvatarLabs’ research and development efforts.
Channel Factory
Brand suitability and ad performance platform Channel Factory has expanded its team in Poland and appointed a new sales director. Szymon Szmigiel joins as sales director to develop, manage, and grow the company’s agency and brand relationships within the region, and to support Channel Factory’s continued expansion across the EMEA market.
Cheil Worldwide
Cheil Worldwide signed an investment agreement with Hivelab, a digital convergence company in South Korea, to strengthen the company’s digital marketing capabilities. Cheil Worldwide and Hivelab have collaborated since 2015 and, through this investment, Cheil Worldwide obtains access to Hivelab’s digital convergence capability.
Duncan Channon
Duncan Channon made three new hires to bolster its creative and design leadership, adding creative directors Kelly McCullough and Jessea Hankins, and design director Darlene Gibson.
McCullough, who joins from Eleven, will be responsible for leading and winning new business, and joins the creative leadership for the agency’s largest account, Covered California. Hankins, who returns to the agency after several years away, will lead the CA Department of Public Health Covid-19 vaccine education campaign, and lead creative for Ferrara Candy Co. brands SweeTarts and Black Forest. Gibson, a former freelancer for Eleven, R/GA, FCB and others, is tasked with leading the agency’s design practice.
Envoy
Digital consultancy Envoy has appointed Caroline Murphy as its chief growth officer. Murphy will be a part of the executive leadership team and will oversee all communications and new business development for Envoy’s three offices in San Diego, Irvine and Chicago.
Murphy is the first international hire based out of Canada bringing over two decades of integrated communications experience at the global, national and local levels. Prior to joining Envoy, Murphy served as vp, strategic growth at Huge, where she led communications and new business development in Canada.
Essence
Essence has hired Richard Hartell as its new global chief client officer, overseeing the agency’s long-standing relationship with Google. He comes to Essence having most recently served as chief strategy officer and global president of strategy and transformation at Publicis Media.
Richard has 20 years’ experience in media agencies across two continents in a range of roles. He has worked with a range of clients including Samsung, Mondelez, Blackberry, Heineken, Honda and Citi.
FlyteVu
Entertainment Marketing agency FlyteVu announced agency developments with 36% staff growth and 13 new clients added to its growing and diversified client roster.
FlyteVu’s newest clients include Bernstein, Clean Cause, Lunchclub, Skin Pharm, The Martin Agency, Tractor Supply Company, UPS and Vistaprint. The addition of these new clients shows continued growth in providing full-service entertainment marketing services for a diverse range of clients.
New hires for the agency include Chris Simmons, head of talent and influencers, who was previously vice president of celebrity and influencer marketing at The Marketing Arm, and Ellen Prinzi, integrated media director, previously director of business development at Gateway Blend.
Additional new hires over the past month include digital strategist McKenna Monk, account manager Sara McCauley, senior account manager Lauren Miller, producer Rachel Reynolds and talent strategist Hannah Sandfeld.
ForwardPMX
Global marketing services company ForwardPMX has made four new hires and six promotions throughout Q2 and Q3 of this year. New hires include Hattie Whiting, chief growth officer for Europe, Sheila Hollins, svp of integrated media, Felicia Zerrenner, vp of display, and Kim Pezone, vp of account management.
Promotions include Toni Box to svp of social, Sara Pollack to vp of marketing, Christie Frazer to vp of affiliate marketing, global, Gunilla Huddleston to vp of marketing, EMEA, Kim Davis to vp of paid media and Abby Kersh to head of people, EMEA.
Fred & Farid
Fred & Farid has launched Flawed, a new consultancy label created by Karen Ge and invested in by Fred & Farid Shanghai. Flawed aims to help brands confront their flaws and turn the imperfections into strategic elements of business growth.
Flawed has been launched in Fred & Farid’s operational hub in Shanghai under the management of Ge, head of strategy. She will lead this entity as managing partner alongside Feng Huang, CEO and partner at Fred & Farid Shanghai.
Global Sports Venture Studio
Nascar will join Global Sports Venture Studio’s (GSVS) growing set of partners that includes a group of sports leagues, teams and brands. GSVS is a joint venture between R/GA Ventures and the L.A. Dodgers’ Elysian Park Ventures. It brings together leaders from the world’s top sports organizations to identify, develop and operationalize new athlete and fan experiences through startup pilots and investments and the development of new products, services, and technologies.
GSVS will partner with Nascar to develop a strategy that can help deliver on its innovation vision by tapping into the global startup ecosystem.
Hart
Hart, Inc., an Ohio-based independent marketing and advertising agency, has added four new members to its growing team. Erin Lee joins as account executive; Dan Vest joins as project manager; Lindsay West joins as junior designer; and Hayley Lardinais joins as account executive.
Hush
Experiential design firm Hush is continuing to expand its team by welcoming Joel Watkins as senior designer. A veteran of respected design and digital firms including Elephant and Huge, Watkins has been an integral part of notable projects, including Stonewall Forever and The Orbit for HBO Max and AT&T.
KDSC
Kickdrum Strategy & Creative, a Cincinnati-based creative firm, is broadening service offerings to add research and data analysis to its current capabilities of strategy and creative. As part of the expansion, the agency is rebranding to KDSC.
Landor & Fitch
Global brand transformation company Landor & Fitch has appointed Joe Crump as executive strategy director of experience, Americas. Based in New York City, Crump will lead the company’s experience strategy practice, where he will oversee the team across the Americas. He will also focus on new business development and organic growth.
Previously, as CEO of Wunderman Thompson New York, Crump launched the agency’s first customer experience center of excellence in North America.
Lively
Independent global brand experience agency Lively has appointed Lottie Dennis as senior creative producer. Dennis has been a freelancer with Lively. She also consulted for Vice when it first set up its experiential division in 2018.
Mach9
Founders Jaime Suarez and Albert Moufarrij have announced the official launch of Mach9, a new digital marketing agency in New York City specializing in helping highly regulated industries control their online narrative. Their mission is to set the standard for regulated brands to communicate online in a socially responsible way.
Founded in 2020, Mach9 has grown its clientele with regulated brands in nicotine, cannabis, alcohol, pharmaceuticals and gambling.
MNTN
Connected TV platform MNTN has hired Joanne Bradford as chief growth officer. Bradford was most recently the president of Honey, an ecommerce platform acquired by PayPal for $4 billion, and was previously chief operating officer and chief marketing officer at SoFi. Bradford, who also has held leadership roles at Pinterest, Yahoo and Microsoft, will be managing MNTN’s growth.
MNTN’s chief creative officer Ryan Reynolds, whose creative agency Maximum Effort Marketing was recently acquired by MNTN, commented: “Joanne is the real deal. Within two minutes of meeting her, I knew she was exactly the right person to help us champion making TV ads as simple and accessible as search and social. Her intelligence, vision, passion and kindness are a perfect match for the company we’re building at MNTN. We’re lucky to have her.”
National CineMedia
Cinema advertising network National CineMedia (NCM) has hired Amy Tunick to the newly created role of svp, chief marketing officer to lead its integrated marketing team. She will oversee NCM’s brand strategy, creative development, marketing solutions, consumer marketing, studio relations and public relations.
Tunick brings over two decades of agency, brand and media experience working with Fortune 100 and 500 advertisers. Previously at WarnerMedia, she led a 15-person team implementing custom cross-platform campaigns for domestic and global advertisers at CNN while overseeing operations and strategy for Courageous, CNN’s brand studio. She also led event marketing for the news ad sales division and produced CNN’s upfront event from 2018-2020. Prior to WarnerMedia, she was president of WPP’s Grey Activation & PR.
One Minute to Midnight
Market research and insight consultancy One Minute to Midnight is expanding its global reach with new hires in both its U.S. and U.K. hubs. Amalia Webber joins the New York office while Emily Hoong joins the London team, both as research managers.
Webber will lead research projects, help the business development team acquire new clients in the Americas and grow the agency’s U.S. footprint. Hoong brings a deep understanding of Asian cultures, having grown up in Malaysia and Hong Kong, combined with market research industry experience.
PA Consulting
Design leader John Edson has joined PA as a partner. He will lead PA’s U.S. design and engineering practice and oversee the teams who joined from Astro Studios, Essential Design and Cooper Perkins.
Edson brings 30 years’ experience as a designer, advisor and educator and was the founder and principal of John by Design, a firm he created after leaving McKinsey & Company, where he served as partner.
Shadow
Creative marketing agency Shadow has expanded its leadership team with three new partners. Erica Larsen and Jamie D’Attoma assume new posts as executive vice presidents, partners, and Brian Vaughan, formerly executive creative director, has been named executive creative director, partner.
The leadership expansion also includes firsts for the agency’s four co-founders: Lisette Sand-Freedman becomes the agency’s first-ever chief visionary officer; Brad Zeifman becomes chief revenue officer; Michelle Sokoloff becomes chief operating officer; and Liza Suloti becomes chief communications officer.
Smartly.io
Advertising automation platform Smartly.io appointed Ryan Jamboretz as its first chief strategy officer. In this role, Jamboretz will lead the company’s partnerships with major social media platforms, mergers and acquisitions, as well as corporate strategy. He most recently served as chief development officer at Amobee.
Squeak E. Clean Studios
Global creative audio network Squeak E. Clean Studios has promoted Rob Barbato to executive creative producer following six years as a creative director with the company. Additionally, creative director Justin Hori will transition from the Chicago shop to the Los Angeles studios to head up the West Coast.
Barbato will oversee the company’s creative direction and presence, fusing his composing and producing expertise. Taking up the reins in L.A., Hori will continue to bolster the studio’s slate of award-winning work for top clients including Apple, Reebok, Adidas, Volkswagen and Budweiser.
The Many
Independent integrated agency The Many has been named integrated agency of record for floral sourcing company The Bouqs Co. The Many will bring The Bouqs Co. to life to differentiate the brand from the category and continue growth as AOR across creative and media.
The Many is tasked with developing a creative brand platform to transform The Bouqs Co. into a household name through creative and media efforts. New work will be unveiled in time for the holiday season.
The Marketing Arm
The Marketing Arm (TMA) has promoted Laragh Gallagher to executive creative director. She was previously svp of creative and is the first senior creative appointment by the agency’s newly named chief creative officer Harris Wilkinson.
Since joining TMA in 2007, Gallagher has led creative for new business, most recently helping to onboard one of the agency’s newest clients Pernod Ricard.
Two by Four
Independent agency Two by Four has promoted Adam VonOhlen to chief creative officer from his previous role as executive creative director, and Bill Lindsey from creative director to executive creative director. The two creatives and longtime agency vets will lead Two by Four’s growing creative and design department across the agency’s 30-plus active clients.
VSA Partners
Brand strategy and design agency VSA Partners has led the brand transformation of AMRI, a contract drug manufacturing organization, emphasizing its ability to take drug development “from curiosity to cure.” That’s the core positioning and tagline VSA developed as it has transformed the company to Curia.