Digital advertising agency DigitasLBi have announced a brace of important new hires this past week. The latest is Morgan Carroll, who will serve as executive vice president and executive creative officer of the agency's Chicago and San Francisco offices. Carroll has worked in digital marketing for 20 years now, and was in fact a founding member of the Darwin Digital agency, owned by Saatchi & Saatchi. Carroll, who will be based out of the Chicago office, joins Digitas from an EVP position at Deutsch NYC, where he served for over a decade, directing campaigns for respected brands including Microsoft, IKEA, Kodak and DIRECTV. His most recent successful campaign was the “Perfect Match” Super Bowl commercial for Go Daddy's. Carroll replaces Kevin Drew Davis as the creative leader and he will assume his role on the 21st of April, reporting to Chicago/San Francisco president Doug Ryan.
Morgan Carroll will serve as executive vice president and executive creative officer of the agency's Chicago and San Francisco offices
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Digitas has decided to beef up its Asian presence by making a series of senior hires in its Singapore-based, Asia Pacific management team. Digitas has hired Justin Peyton as chief strategy officer, Mark Newton as head of media, Kaythaya Maw as chief technology officer, and Greta Corke, who will drive the agency's user-centric design approach as chief user experience officer. Internationally, Chris Clarke has been appointed chief creative office and all of the new hires will report to Asia Pacific chief executive Roy Capon. The Asia Pacific leadership, oversees 17 local offices and 1000 staff and has experienced a reported 400% year-on-year growth from markets such as Australia, China, India, Japan and Singapore.
In other DigitasLBi news, the agency has recently unveiled a new campaign for John Frieda's 'Frizz Ease' range of haircare products. The campaign aims to underline women's emotional connection with their hair, and centres on a digital ad, which was posted earlier this week on the company's YouTube channel. The “A Girl's Got To Be Free” ad shows three models scaling the statue of liberty to give her ancient copper curls a makeover. DigitasLBi vice president and group account director Melissa Pruessing, said the ad was about “The confidence that is instilled in women when they've got great hair,” and adds that “We wanted to create an unexpected online experience that captures the simple, universal truth that when women pull their hair back in resignation to frizz, they pull themselves back.”
The “A Girl's Got To Be Free” ad shows three models scaling the statue of liberty to give her ancient copper curls a makeover
The spot (created in tandem with production company Click 3X) is a part of the 'Never Pull Back' integrated campaign, which also includes a brand new website for Frizz Ease and “Digital paid, owned and earned media” executed by Click3X. Another Publicis Group agency, Spark, will handle the campaign's media planning and buying. This is the first campaign from DigitasLBi since it became the lead digital agency for brand parent company Kao USA last year, and is expected to be a big hit for both the agency and the brand.
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer who has never suffered with frizzy hair and thinks the statue of liberty looks just darling with its wonderful new hairdo!
