Y&R Taps Kevin Brady for Dell

Young & Rubicam, six months after replacing sister shop Enfatico as lead creative agency on Dell’s global account, has added Droga5’s Kevin Brady as a global creative director on the business.

Brady, a writer who previously worked as a cd on Method, Puma, Rhapsody and pre-paid cell phone company NET10 at Droga5, will share creative leadership on Dell with Guillermo Vega, another global cd and art director.

The duo will oversee some 20 to 30 creatives who work on Dell, said global chief creative officer Tony Granger. The bulk of those creatives are based in New York.

“My whole aim here is to create work that the client loves,” Granger said.

Beyond Dell, Brady and Vega — a Y&R veteran who transferred to New York from the shop’s Buenos Aires, Argentina, office in July 2008 — will serve as creative directors on the U.S. portions of two other global accounts: Bacardi and Virgin Atlantic. In addition, Vega, 38, remains ecd for Latin America.

With WPP Group’s Y&R taking the lead on Dell, Enfatico has downsized and become a unit of Y&R Brands. In essence, an agency that was designed to fulfill all of Dell’s global marketing needs now handles activation and distribution efforts. Also, last month Enfatico named a new CEO: Ronnie Job, founder of AdPeople, a Copenhagen, Denmark, shop that WPP acquired to help build Enfatico, replaced Torrence Boone. Boone has since resurfaced at Google as managing director of agency relations for North America.

Meanwhile, Y&R has yet to break its first big campaign for Dell, whose U.S media spending has declined considerably in recent years.

Last year, through November, Dell spent about $120 million in major measured media, compared to $200 million for all of 2008, according to Nielsen. And 2008’s total was down from about $265 million in 2007 and more than $400 million in 2006, per Nielsen. Those figures don’t include online spending, however.

The 44-year-old Brady spent more than two years at Droga5 in New York. Before that, he was a cd at Publicis Groupe’s Publicis in New York, where his clients included Heineken, Amstel Light and BMW.

Earlier in his career, Brady worked for Granger as a copywriter at Interpublic Group’s Bozell in New York. Together, they worked on Milk PEP among other accounts. “I know him. He knows me. I don’t have to start from scratch with him,” Granger said.

In a statement, Brady described Granger as a mentor and said he was drawn by the opportunity to work on “such global iconic brands.”