• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, February 8, 2010

Wieden+Kennedy on Monday named Iain Tait as its new global interactive executive creative director.

Tait joins Dan Wieden and John Jay, executive creative directors, and chief operating officer Dave Luhr, on the global management team that oversees all seven of the W+K network offices.

Tait spent the past eight years as creative director and head of strategy for independent agency Poke in London, where he was a founding partner and worked with such clients as American Express, Orange, Topshop, Yahoo and Zopa.

"I'm sad to leave Poke -- it's an amazing place," said Tait. In regard to W+K, he said: "I've always had a huge amount of respect for the work, culture and risk-taking ethos."

"Their hunger for digital goes way beyond what we call advertising," Tait said of W+K. "They understand the power of the network and use it to create strong and provocative relationships between good companies and their consumers."

With an eye on total global domination, the independent W+K conducted a major executive restructuring at its Portland headquarters in early 2008, with its principal executives -- Dan Wieden, Dave Luhr, and John Jay -- relinquishing their day-to-day responsibilities to focus on the agency's global operations.

In their places, Tom Blessington came on as managing director, while Jelly Helm and Steve Luker assumed the roles of creative directors for all of the agency's Portland accounts.

Founded in late 2001, Poke was backed by Mother, which remains a shareholder in the shop. Poke opened a New York office about three years ago, and more recently launched the Dyson vortex fan globally.

Prior to Poke, Tait was part of the management team for Oven Digital, a global digital agency in London, and director of product development for First Tuesday in London, where he worked in the startup space responsible for developing and delivering new online business models.

Tait, who was voted "most influential person in new media" by New Media Age magazine in 2009, also pens industry blog Crackunit.com