The formation of a new advertising entity is a bit like the opening of a restaurant: the investors have put up the money, the kitchen equipment has been installed, and someone has chosen the typeface for the menu. What remains is the question of whether anyone can actually cook.
DonerColle Partners, the agency formed from the combination of Doner and Colle McVoy, has now answered that question by hiring Mariana O'Kelly, most recently an executive creative director at Leo Burnett, as its first chief creative officer. Ms. O'Kelly will be charged with establishing a unified creative identity for the merged operation.
The appointment follows what the agency described as its first account win under the new structure: the salty snacks portfolio of the Hershey Company, which includes brands that exist in a state of perpetual tension with the company's better-known chocolate products.
"Now is the absolute right time to bring in a creative leader who can really set that creative vision and that shared ambition to bring the best out of both agencies," said David Henrichs, who leads the combined entity.
Ms. O'Kelly arrives from Leo Burnett, which has been part of the Publicis Groupe empire since 2002 and which has, over the decades, supplied creative leadership to a considerable swath of the American agency business. (It is the nature of large agencies to function as farm teams for smaller ones, though the metaphor is rarely welcomed by those being farmed.)
The hire reflects a pattern that has become familiar in the wake of agency mergers: first the announcement, then a flagship account win to validate the theory, and finally a senior creative appointment to suggest that the theory might actually work.
Whether the restaurant will earn its stars remains, as always, a matter for the diners to decide.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Mariana O'Kelly Leaves Leo Burnett to Lead Creative at DonerColle Partners"