4 Creative Agencies Hire New Staffers


Wingard celebrates its 10th anniversary by officially dropping the Creative from its agency name, moving to a new office in Jacksonville, Florida, and hiring Russell Baker, a 15-year Coca-Cola veteran, to serve as Chief Strategy Officer.

In his new role, Baker will oversee all marketing and communications strategy for the company’s clients, as well as lead business development efforts, emphasizing the company’s core specialties: arts and entertainment organizations, restaurants and retail brands and consumer-packaged goods.

SS+K is appointing Feh Tarty as Chief Creative Officer replacing Bobby Hershfield, who departed to The Community. Based in New York City, Feh will be tasked with overseeing the creative team of 15, but his purview will expand across the entire office. He previously worked at Goodby Silverstein & Partners SF, Wieden+Kennedy London and Mother London. Feh also created a music video for Wu-Tang Clan artist RZA highlighting the refugee crisis.

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Vice adds two new group creative directors to lead the youth media company's in-house creative team. Donna Lamar joins from Twitter, where she served as creative director, Twitter #Studio, and David Lennon joins from The Wall Street Journal's Custom Studios, where he served as global creative director. Both will develop and execute content, experiences and non-traditional advertising strategy for the network's clients.

The Gate London names Kerry Fyans, ex-Dentsu Aegis Network, Jaywing's Epiphany, as head of media to oversee the agency's media planning and buying. Fyan’s arrival at MSQ Partners-lead communications company follows the appointment of a new leadership team in 2017: Beri Cheetham, former ECD of Leo Burnett; Jamie Elliott, ex-CEO of MullenLowe London; and Kit Altin, former head of innovation and global strategy director, Leo Burnett.

Also, industry veteran Ed Han is transitioning from an agency creative to independent brand expert by launching his own hybrid creative and production consultancy shop titled Edify Story Foundry. One early client is iRobot, makers of the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, where Han has partnered with the brand on various content needs, including global TV commercials and product videos.

“Given the seismic changes to the industry, I felt I could better share brand stories by taking my agency experience and transplanting it in the fertile soil of content creation,” says Han. “It’s not a new idea, but clients are more receptive to it than ever before because they need more content than ever before. And they need it to be done efficiently.”

The two-plus decade talent most recently served as executive creative director, Walton Isaacson, where he oversaw the creative output for all three offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, working with clients Lexus, Verizon, Samsung, Dove and AXE. Earlier, Han worked with Publicis for 10 years in both the Chicago and New York offices managing the Whirlpool creative group, which included Maytag, KitchenAid, Whirlpool and Jenn-Air.


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