The San Francisco office of Young & Rubicam Brands has named KEVIN MCCARTHY as group creative director. Additionally, the agency has elevated PAUL CAREK to creative director. McCarthy will be working across both the Y&R and Wunderman practices, with creative duties for the agency’s business-to-business and technology client base, including AMD, Hitachi Data Systems, Symantec, and MSN TV.

MIKE METTLER, former vice president/editor-in-chief Road & Track Road Gear, has been named vice president/editor-in-chief of Sound & Vision. Mettler replaces ROBERT ANKOSKO who is leaving the company.

The Phelps Group has hired MEGAN WEISS and KELLIE BURRIS as media specialists.

JAY FRESHWATER has been named sales director of The Weather Channel Interactive, overseeing the company's Chicago sales office. Freshwater will manage sales efforts for weather.com, Desktop Weather by The Weather Channel and The Weather Channel Mobile. Freshwater has been with The Weather Channel for eight years and most recently served as national sales director for Desktop Weather.

CAREY WITMER has been promoted to associate publisher, advertising for Better Homes and Gardensmagazine. Witmer has been with Meredith since 1998 and most recently served as publisher of Country Home magazine.

NEIL ROMAINE has joined the Watauga Group as strategic marketing director.

DM2-DecisionMaker has named MARY MILLER senior marketing manager.

MICHAEL SHERWOOD has accepted a national sales position with Bayard Advertising. Most recently, Sherwood worked for BSA Advertising.

JOSH WEINBERG has been named director of communications for Discovery Channel and the Science Channel, where he will develop strategy and oversee publicity campaigns for the network’s programming and its executives. Most recently, Weinberg served as a public relations specialist for newsPRos, where he oversaw the DC office.

The New York office of Universal McCann has named CHERYL JEAN CLAUDE, SVP, managing director to initially oversee media planning on the US Army account and later expand her role to other clients. Before joining UM, Jean Claude spent more than four years at Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners as group director for the Media Kitchen. In addition, GARY BARSKY joins the agency as SVP, group media director, responsible for managing the US Army’s media planning activities. Barsky was previously group media director at Lowe Worldwide where he spent 18 years working on …