Nearly a year after Wpromote acquired Giant Spoon — a deal that united a performance marketing shop with an experiential agency known for building elaborate branded environments — the combined entity is signaling that the merger has moved past the polite handshake phase.
Wpromote x Giant Spoon, as the agency now styles itself, has elevated Ian Grody to global chief creative officer, a role that places him atop an integrated creative organization spanning brand campaigns, experiential work, creator marketing, and the performance-driven advertising that was Wpromote's original calling card. Mr. Grody, who had been chief creative officer of Giant Spoon since before the acquisition, will now oversee some 50 people across the practice.
The promotion suggests that the agency is betting its future on a particular theory of the case: that the disciplines of brand-building and performance marketing, which have spent the last decade retreating to separate corners of the industry, might be coaxed into working together if someone with sufficient creative ambition is standing in the middle.
"We're building an integrated creative organization that will make a dent in this industry," Mr. Grody said in a statement. He added that "everything is a canvas," a phrase that copywriters have been writing on whiteboards since approximately 2011 but that remains, for better or worse, largely true.
Andrea Bendzick, the agency's chief executive, framed the move in the language of client service. "Our clients need a creative partner who can connect the dots between creative and performance," she said.
Mr. Grody joined Giant Spoon in 2018 and has worked with HBO, Netflix, Google, and Lucid Motors, among others. Before that, he was at Kettle, part of Code and Theory. He is also, according to the agency, a published graphic novelist — a detail that may or may not explain his conviction that a social ad deserves the same creative attention as a television spot.
Whether that conviction survives contact with quarterly performance reports remains to be seen.
Original story published in Adweek: "Wpromote x Giant Spoon Elevates Ian Grody to Global Chief Creative Officer"