Are you geared up for awards season yet? Well, whatever the case, the Art Directors Club has solidified its its 90th Awards juries with the additions of Taxi chairman/co-founder Paul Lavoie (pictured) and Wayne Best as Advertising and Hybrid chairs, respectively.

Best, if you best remember, left his ECD post at JWT last September to pursue a new “creative partnership,” which is a New York operation called Cog. Lavoie’s shop, of course, is now in the hands of Sir Marty and WPP. The Advertising and Hybrid categories have an entry deadline of Feb. 6. Check out the complete list of the aforementioned categories’ jurors, including Doner’s Rob Strasberg and W+K Amsterdam expat Jeff Kling, after the jump.

Read more

It seems like there’s been an executive creative director hiring spree this week as Ogilvy is the latest to announce that it’s added more senior creatives to its New York office, namely Heavy.com co-founder David Carson and award-winning Saatchi & Saatchi alum, Alison Gragnano.

Carson, whose duties will include partnering with fellow ECD Chris Mitton and leading teams on such clients as American Express, IKEA and Stoli, helped launch music network Fuse among other efforts. In a statement, the man who actually served as CD at Ogilvy on the IBM e-business during the late 90′s says, “I’m pretty excited to join Ogilvy at a time when emerging media has gone mass. A-list brands are chomping at the bit to leverage new channels of communication. It’s an enormous opportunity.”

Gragnano, meanwhile, will work on Unilever and Kimberly-Clark business. During her four years at Saatchi, she moved her way up to global CD status while working for brands like General Mills and P&G. Gragnano was part of the Crest team that won Gold at Cannes for the “You Can Say Anything With a Smile” campaign.

On the IBM front, Ogilvy also increased staff with the addition of ex-Crispin creative Jason Marks as GCD, TBWA\Digital Arts alum Howard Pyle as global director of digital platforms and former 180 Amsterdam head of digital production Pierre Wendling as executive producer.

JWT announced that James Cooper has joined the agency’s New York office as chief creative innovation officer. Cooper, who we now recognize from Matt O’Rourke‘s going away party (blatant shout-out), arrives from Saatchi & Saatchi, where he spent the past the past 18 months as a integrated creative director and led campaigns including JCPenney’s “Return to the Doghouse” and Wheaties’ “The Most Valuable Tweeter.”

Prior to Saatchi, Cooper spent nearly three years as a CD at Dare, London (where he helped the shop win “Digital Agency of the Decade” nods from Campaign), and was a creative partner at Anomaly for a brief while. In addition to Cooper, JWT’s North American CEO and worldwide digital director David Eastman announced that Beth Waxman-Arteta and Iris Worldwide alum John Baker will take on the roles of co-presidents of client services at JWT, effective Nov. 1.

Update: According to a source familiar with the matter, Graf’s departure definitely had an impact on staff as we’ve been told that Dan Kelleher, CD on Miller and Alison Gragnano, CD on Gen Mills, both quit earlier this year. The pair were the two most senior creatives under new CCO Con Williamson, who we hear is a nice guy but has been put in a tough spot in the post-Graf era.