DDB

Sonya Grewal, who, just to remind you, was most recently creative director on that skydiving Hotels.com effort out of Y&R Chicago, has packed her bags and headed to New York to assume a GCD role at DDB. Grewal started her career at JWT New Delhi before moving to Chicago to take on senior art director roles at Cramer-Krasselt then Ogilvy. Now at DDB, she will serve as group creative director on the Hertz and Empire City accounts.

Along with Grewal, former Johannes Leonardo art director Dave Tomkins is joining DDB New York as an ACD and will work across the agency’s accounts. Tomkins joined Johannes just last November along with copywriter Iain Nevill. Maybe 11 months does count as tenure these days.

A little over a month after leaving StrawberryFrog, Richie Grantham has found a new gig, making the move from New York to Chicago where he’s joining up with DDB as SVP, group strategy director on the Mars Wrigley business. Grantham spent eight months at the Frogpond, serving as group strategic planning director for Pampers, Sabra, etc.

Joining Grantham on the Mars Wrigley account at DDB Chicago is Janelle James, who’s taking on the role of SVP, group business director. Prior to DDB, James had two tours of duty at Leo Burnett, where she spent 10 years total and worked her way up to VP, account director on P&G North America.

This year saw two centennials celebrated in the ad industry. June 23 marked what would have been the 100th birthday of David Ogilvy, with the agency that he co-founded, Ogilvy and Mather, honoring the Mad Man with an online video contest and a lavish ceremony at the Cannes Lions Festival.

And now, in case you slept on it, DDB Worldwide remembered Bill Bernbach‘ s 100th over the weekend. The agency co-founder/co-namesake was notable for taking a very hands-on approach to DDB as its CEO, with notable campaigns including Volkswagen’s “Think Small” series of print ads (1963′s “Snow Plow” spot for the automaker is above) and Life Cereal’s “Mikey” TV spots. In contrast to Ogilvy’s fancy party, DDB chose to instead just look at examples of Bernbach’s most celebrated work (pictured below). Oh, and Don Draper raised a glass to Bernbach’s memory as well.

In a statement regarding the centennial celebration, DDB U.K. chief client officer Nick Fox says, “When he co-founded DDB, Bernbach started a legacy – an agency that had the gumption to do things differently, with an honest approach that cut to the quick. DDB Worldwide was founded on the power of creativity, the ability to see things in a way others didn’t. The agency took the notion that social stance was no longer important but intelligence – appealing to customers not by what they did or didn’t have, but by who they were as individuals.”

For those interested in learning more about advertising’s “golden age” where personalities like Ogilvy and Bernbach made a name for themselves, you can pick up the recently published Andrew Cracknell book The Real Mad Men. Until then, have the humility to admit that if you got a creative brief that said, “Sell Hitler’s car to America,” you would not hold a candle to Bernbach’s work.

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Twenty-year IPG vet Peter McGuinness is splitting for rival holding company Omnicom and joining DDB Chicago as president/CEO. McGuinness, who has spent the last three years in the same post at NYC-based Gotham, replaces Rick Carpenter, who parted ways with DDB last December to “begin the next phase” of his career. It’s a homecoming of sorts for the new DDB Chicago president/CEO, who says in a statement, “Chicago is where I was born so it’s a bit of a homecoming, and it’s at the heart of DDB.  I can’t wait to bring some heat to the windy city.”

During his two decades at IPG, McGuinness was named EVP/worldwide account director at McCann Worldgroup before he turned 30, eventually playing a pivotal role in bringing MasterCard’s “Priceless” campaign to the masses. By the time he hit 35, the exec was named regional director, EMEA for IPG’s Momentum and was eventually inducted into the AAF Advertising Hall of Achievement two years ago.

In his new role, McGuinness will work alongside DDB Chicago’s CCO Ewan Paterson, who has been on somewhat of a hiring streak as of late.

Nearly two months after we first reported that Ewan Paterson‘s old chums from London’s CHI & Partners–Matt Collier and Wayne Robinson–would be reuniting with him at DDB Chicago this summer, the latter agency has now confirmed that the pair has officially joined as creative directors, and ahead of schedule from the looks of it.

In their new roles, Collier and Robinson will across DDB Chicago’s client roster, which now includes the likes of Sierra Mist and several Mars brands. Though the creative duo has spent the past five years at CHI & Partners, where they recently won a D&AD Yellow Pencil and Campaign Best Print Ad honors for their Sunday Times “Rich List,” their relationship dates back several more to the days of Mother and JWT London.

During the course of their career, they’ve worked on Shell, Mazda, Toyota, Nestle and 888.com and have garnered over 150 awards in the process. Their mate and current DDB Chicago CCO Paterson says of the pair, “Matt and Wayne are one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with. They have the talent and the hunger that produce a relentless flow of award-winning and new-business-winning ideas, and what’s more, they have the ability to create a staggering diversity of work that crosses all media channels.”

More digital hires? More digital hires. DDB Chicago sent the word that Azher Ahmed has joined the agency ranks as SVP, director of digital operations. What does that mean, exactly? Well, according to the agency, Ahmed will obviously be responsible for building out DDB Chi’s digital unit but he’s also tasked with “refining all aspects of the agency process and infrastructure to best serve its clients’ needs in a digital world.” Sounds ambitious.

Ahmed arrives from the Martin Agency, where he spent the past two years as SVP, director of technology. By joining DDB Chicago, he’ll reunite with his new boss, chief digital officer/managing director and fellow Martin alum Jonathan Sackett, who glowingly states, “I’m honored that he will be joining me at DDB to make the most of the digital powerhouse we are quickly becoming.” Prior to his work at Martin, which included the FWA 2009 Site of the Year-winning “JFK: We Choose the Moon,” Ahmed had two-year stints at both as director of digital technology at Draftfcb and Arnold Worldwide.

It’s hard to believe it’s already been almost a week since the streets of Vancouver erupted in fire, brimstone and panicked public makeout sessions after a loss in the Stanley Cup Finals. What will be an interesting anecdote for American hockey fans to tell their offspring for years to come (“…and that, son, was the night that Canada finally lost its mind…”) has understandably become a nightmare for Tourism Vancouver, as it’s difficult for a city to represent itself as safe when there are pictures floating around the internet of intoxicated youth overturning police vehicles and smashing in store windows. Needless to say, things have gotten worse for Vancouverites since the great Olympics displacing homeless people dilemma of 2010.

So, with the help of DDB Canada, Tourism Vancouver has started “This is Vancouver,” a Tumblr-powered site that aims to represent this scenic city as the peace-loving, culturally mature place that anyone should be happy to visit. The site thrives by having  Vancouver residents submit their own condemnations of the riots and loyal support for the city, a gesture that the city’s mayor says, “provides one more way for everyone to express their love for our city as we collectively move forward and show the world what kind of city Vancouver truly is.”

Tourism Vancouver president/CEO Rick Antonson says in a statement, “Today, Vancouver’s integrity shines again. This is a testament to the commitment of this city’s citizens to set things right if they have gone wrong. ‘This Is Our Vancouver.com’ is our way of helping the world know that Vancouver’s greatest asset is its people.” What do you think? Is this site something Vancouver needed to produce to help clear its reputation?

Mars is cleaning some house when it comes to its agency relationships and as a result, it’s consolidated its global creative business with BBDO and DDB. What this means is that TBWA and SapientNitro are out, as the latter two agencies will end their ad work for the mega-brand by September (Sapient, though, will continue digital strategy work and support the Mars corporate site beyond that).

BBDO now adds Dove, Twix, Pedigree and Whiskas to its Mars portfolio that currently includes M&M’s, Snickers (which it re-won in 2009), Uncle Ben’s (won last year) Orbit and Masterfood among others. As a result, the agency has grabbed the majority of Mars global assignments. As for DDB, it will not only take over Milky Way in the U.S. as well as Combos, but will grab the baton for the rest of the global Mars Petcare line that features products including Kitekat and Temptations/Dreamies (yeah, we’ve never heard of them either).

Says Mars global CMO Bruce McColl in a statement: “We are grateful for the contributions that SapientNitro and TBWA have made to the growth of our brands over the years.  This was a tough decision, but we are very confident that consolidating our brands with DDB and BBDO will help us continue to build our connection with consumers all over the world.”

Well, while the Mars Petcare line among others has been taken from TBWA\Chiat Day, its L.A. CCO Rob Schwartz seems quite confident that the agency will rebound with another major client win (see above).

Now that he’s been CCO of DDB Chicago for well over a year now, it looks like Ewan Paterson is feeling comfy enough to entice a couple of old mates from his former stomping grounds, CHI London, to join him in the Windy City. We’ve received confirmation that the creative team of Matt Collier and Wayne Robinson will be leaving their posts at CHI & Partners and will most likely land at DDB Chicago by August (as you know, Visa issues can be a pain these days).

Matt & Wayne started their partnership at Mother before heading to JWT London, where they spent seven years, worked on accounts including Shell and were part of the team that helped win the $600 million global HSBC account from Lowe back in ’04. During their four-plus years at CHI, meanwhile, the pair has been responsible for notable print efforts including Sunday Times “Rich List” among others. Since their is still some lead time for their arrival, Robinson and Collier’s exact titles, start dates at DDB have yet to be revealed.

Along with the CHI alums, DDB Chicago has also added Paul Cohen as head of art.

After we reported on Intel adding DDB to its agency roster last week, things still seemed a little vague in terms of what the relationship between the two exactly entailed (due in part to lack of initial feedback). Well, the veil’s been lifted a bit this week and we just spoke directly to Intel, which indeed confirms that Tribal DDB (particularly its San Francisco office) will take the lead on Intel’s master brand account that includes the “Sponsors of Tomorrow” work (good on ya, tipsters). A spokesperson for the brand tells us that Tribal “won out because their breakthrough ideas for the next iteration of the campaign,” which Intel says will break in the second-half of this year.

As for Venables Bell & Partners, the SF shop is still on Intel’s agency list, is working on “several sweet areas” for the brand and has a “sizable portion of the pie.”  The Intel spokesperson refers back to the company’s “open-source” agency model, saying, “It allows us to be flexible and engage with a number of partners. It would not be unusual to have [Venables], Tribal, Razorfish and MRM in the same conference room discussing a campaign or project and whoever shines brightest might get the nod.”