Less than a month after naming Brent Anderson chief creative officer and Stephen Butler creative chairman, TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles has promoted two more members of its creative department to leadership roles.
Worldwide creative director Renato Fernandez will be an executive creative director and associate creative director Doug Menezes will be a CD, effective immediately. Both have been with the L.A. Gatorade team for several years.
“Renato Fernandez is an almost unparalleled benchmark of leadership and drive,” said Anderson. “For the last 5 years, I’ve toiled alongside Renato as he relentlessly guides, protects and mentors work that truly matters, and work that defines the soul of our brands.”
He added, “Doug Menezes has emerged over the past two years as leader of both concept and craft. His unique upbringing within the industry and recent work on Gatorade makes him a natural choice to help lead Gatorade and continue to involve the brand deeply in culture.”
The newly promoted creatives will help “guide” the department under Andersen with the help of two other recent additions to the TBWA team: ECD Linda Knight, who joined the team last November after more than a decade as a freelancer, and ECD/copywriter Matt Heath, who went to TBWA in March after spending time at Fallon, CAA, 72andSunny and (allegedly) HBO’s late, great Eastbound and Down. Heath currently works on Buffalo Wild Wings, but you may remember him from that time he pretended to sell a Chinese baby on Craigslist.
In 2011, Fernandez relocated to L.A. from Brazil, where he was a senior art director at AlmapBBDO for more than a decade (he also worked on Gatorade there). He then assumed leadership of the sports drink account in 2014 and got the worldwide creative director promotion last April, handling creative on such campaigns as the Derek Jeter “Made in New York” retirement spot.
Menezes, who also hails from Brazil, left his job as an associate design director at CP+B Miami to move to TBWA L.A. in 2013, moving from digital design director to ACD working on the Gatorade and Nixon watches accounts. He worked on the former’s 50th anniversary campaign and the more recent Usain Bolt showcase “Never Lose the Love.”
In addition to these creative moves, longtime group planning director Scott MacMaster was promoted to executive planning director for the Gatorade business last month.