• by Larissa Faw , February 18, 2021

YML, formerly Y Media Labs, is strengthening its creative capabilities as the digital agency seeks to accommodate changing client needs.

The 12-year old shop specializes in designing and engineering digital products and experiences, but increasingly these projects involve creative content.

As part of the move, YML is poaching Shannon Walters from Salesforce for the newly created group creative director role based at the shop’s Redwood City, CA headquarters.

Most recently Walters worked at Salesforce as senior manager, user experience. Earlier he spent time at AKQA in London, before relocating to co-found the AKQA Gothenberg studio to help lead Volvo. He relocated to AKQA San Francisco to help run Coca Cola, Caterpillar and Facebook, among other accounts.

Concurrently, Joe Johnson is promoted to the new position of group creative director in Atlanta while continuing to serve as co-lead of the firm’s Atlanta studio. He has been at YML for two years, before which he was a group creative director at Huge in Atlanta and the Head of UX and service design at North Highlands.

Now, the two new hires will jointly manage a combined creative staff of 60 digital and UX designers, copywriters and content leads.

Stephen Clements, CCO, YML, said “On the back of several new business wins, now is the right time to make this change, to create the conditions and structure for our next growth stage. I’m excited to see what Shannon and Joe will do at YML.”

The company expanded its staff by 42% in 2020, for a total of 400 employees worldwide.