After snatching the Westpac account from Saatchi and releasing a couple of rather well-received campaigns recently, Colenso is on a bit of a roll at the moment. And, as is often the way when the going is good, the hires have followed, with Daniel Wright set to join as digital creative director at the end of the month and Margot Chandler appointed as Clemenger Group’s ‘people development director’ in a newly developed human resources role.
Recent strategic shifts at Tribal DDB and Rapp and TBWA seem to indicate that the cool kids have decided to let digital join their gang. And now Colenso has added a bit more firepower to its digital arsenal.
Wright joins from the newly merged Tribal DDB, where he has been creative director since March 2008. And with Wright and Aaron Turk, Colenso’s other digital creative director, on board, managing director Nick Garrett believes it now has “the strongest digital offering in New Zealand”.
Wright has over 15 years experience working for some of the world’s leading digital agencies, across clients including Coca-cola, Nike, McDonald’s, Cadbury and Diageo. His work has regularly won awards in New Zealand and the UK, including a D&AD Pencil, several Cannes Lions and awards at One Show and AXIS. He has also been a member of the CAANZ Digital Leadership Group and served on the judging panel of AXIS in 2009/2010.
“I have always admired the work coming out of Colenso, and I’m excited to be joining Nick Worthington, Nick Garrett, Turk and their bloody clever team,” says Wright. “It was always going to be a tough decision to leave a group I have so much respect for, but from where I’m standing, Nick and his team look to have things beautifully lined up: broad ideas about what digital can be, enviable client relationships, and stellar talent across many disciplines aligned to produce exciting, open-ended ideas.”
And, following on from DraftFCB’s recent decision to add HR manager, Margot Chandler’s new role at Clemenger Group, “New Zealand’s largest marketing and communications company,” brings the total number of HR managers at Kiwi agencies to three (DDB is the other one).
Clemenger Group chief executive Jim Moser says HR been able to be managed through the finance and administration departments up until now, but the market has changed and this new role will help it to improve staff development, training and retention.
“Margot is the perfect fit for us as she has a tremendous amount of relevant experience, understands the communications industry and will be an excellent cultural fit for the broader Clemenger Group,” he says.
Chandler has been capability manager at Vector for the last three years and, not surprisingly, is looking forward to working in a slightly more creative industry and adding value to the business.
She started her career as a broadcast journalist with roles at TVNZ, BBC Radio and BBC Television and took the role of performance manager at TVNZ in 1998. She then became training manager for TVNZ News and Current Affairs in 2002, where she developed and managed a strategic training and development plan to support the performance of TVNZ news staff. One year later she became learning and development manager for TVNZ, where she was responsible for driving learning, development and organisation-wide HR initiatives.