• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 12, 2011

In another sign that social media is Madison Avenue's next big frontier, full-service agency vet Jon Bond has jumped to social shop Big Fuel Communications as CEO and an equity partner. Bond, who is best known as a co-founder of New York-based Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners, left that agency a year ago and has bounced around the interactive agency services prior to landing at Big Fuel.

He stepped down as the agency's co-chairman in January 2010, after parent holding company MDC Partners paid the agency's founders their final earn-out from their original acquisition deal, and in May 2010, he joined Boulder-based crowd sourcing agency Victors & Spoils as a strategic partner.

Big Fuel indicated Bond would oversee the agency's creative product, but that current CEO and Founder Avi Savar would continue to lead the agency and "drive its vision," which will likely include a big push to raise capital to fuel Big Fuel's growth. The agency also announced that it had retained New York-based investment bank The Jordan Edmiston Group to help raise capital to support its entry into "new markets," and to help it expand its role in the social media services marketplace.

In a related move, the agency said Managing Partner Mike McGraw will shift from operations to content distribution and syndication.

Big Fuel claims some pretty big clients on its current roster, including General Motors, McDonalds, Fisher-Price, Gore-Tex, Budweiser, and Colgate-Palmolive.

During 2010, General Motors named Big Fuel its social media agency of record for its Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC divisions, and the agency expects its organization to expand to more than 200 early in 2011.