Colenso BBDO is licking its collective lips after snaffling up DDB’s hot young creative team James Connor and Christie Cooper in the latest round of agency swapsies. Connor, who has been at DDB for five years, and Cooper for nine, took out a bronze Young Guns Award for DDB three years ago for their out of home Fruit Burst campaign, and also worked on campaigns for Cadbury, Sky, Pascalls, and Pink Batts.
DDB managing director Justin Mowday told the NBR it was sad to see the pair go, but ultimately they wanted a fresh environment.
Colenso’s Nick Worthington, who’s only been wearing his new creative chairman hat for a few months, said the agency felt lucky to have the two join the creative team at Colenso. In return James Cooper said, although they had had a great time working for DDB and had learnt a lot there, they had always been fans of Colenso and were looking forward to working with Worthington.
It’s all part of a serious games of swapsies the agencies have been indulging in recently. Creative team James Tucker and Simon Vicars said goodbye to the DDB and hello to Colenso BBDO last year, so DDB nabbed group account director Angela Watson off Colenso. November saw WhybinTBWATequila Sydney poach head of art, Dave Brady, as creative group head from DDB NZ. Brett Colliver left DDB NZ for Clemenger, Toby Talbot left DDB NZ for a bit of an O.E. in London.. and then Colenso lost James Hurman to Ogilvy Shanghai. The question now is: who’s move it is now?
