Hasta La Creative!

Some marketers have been staffing up their in-house production studios, but retailer Staples is doing something different.

Staples is handing over the operations of its U.S. creative production services studio to McCann Worldgroup’s Craft Worldwide, the network’s production shop. Although the 100 employees that work for Staples’ production team will now work for Craft, they will still work from Staples’ headquarters in Framingham, Mass., handling all U.S. production for print, digital and video.

Craft began working with Staples in 2015, handling print and digital “adaption,” wherein the shop would take digital assets like landing pages and banner ads and make them responsive on various devices like tablets, phones and desktop. Craft launched in 2012.

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Droga5 has added yet another top agency leader to its team–this time on the production side.

Last week, we reported that Lucia Grillo would be leaving 360i after 8 months as head of integrated production at the Dentsu agency. She has accepted the newly created role of production development director with Droga5.

Starting in September, Grillo will join the leadership team atop the shop’s 180-strong production department alongside its heads of interactive production, art production and print services, the director of integrated production business affairs and a yet-to-be-named head of broadcast/film.

In her new role, Grillo will report directly to chief creation officer Sally-Ann Dale, who says, “We see a great value in Lucia’s experience of being on both the production and agency side. She has the ability to run a business, be an astute producer and be client-facing. We want to constantly explore new production solutions and opportunities to better serve us and our clients’ ever-growing content needs.”

During her relatively brief stint with 360i, Grillo introduced a new “agency-wide workflow for project management” and effectively reshaped the entire department in the interest of greater efficiency. She previously managed multidisciplinary Manhattan production company Psyop and served as a group account director/project manager at Brooklyn’s VICE Media after spending time at both McCann and JWT.

“This is a really exciting time to be joining Droga5, as it celebrates its tenth anniversary and continues to create work with impact and ambition, as well as world-class craft,” she said. “I’m happy to be part of the agency’s future success.”

Droga5’s production team has seen some changes in recent months, most prominently the departure of head of production Ben Davies. He left in June to join prod co Furlined in New York, and the aforementioned film hire will be his replacement.

We initially posted that we’d heard Grillo might be leaving the ad agency world, but that was incorrect.

RB has shifted its global Lysol and Dettol cleaning and germ-fighting brands to McCann Worldgroup from Havas, the company said in a statement.

The move on the company’s biggest brand (the two occupy essentially the same brand position around the world) leaves Havas, which once handled most work for RB, with little in the way of major brand assignments in the U.S. Havas does continue to handle such brands as Resolve, Durex and Easy-Off, while RB, better known as Reckitt Benckiser, has shifted key brands to McCann, Droga5 and Wieden & Kennedy in recent years.

But in a simultaneous move, the company announced Havas will work as lead strategic and creative partner on new strategic initiatives, without specifying what those are.

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Forgot your bank card at home? No worries. Many ATMs will soon dispense cash with help from a smartphone and banking app.

A growing number of banks are letting consumers arrange withdrawals via their mobile app and pick up the cash at a nearby automated teller machine. Customers authenticate the transaction by scanning a QR code with their phone, entering a one-time security code or tapping their device on the machine.

The idea is to help customers who have forgotten their cards or worry about thieves stealing their card data via ATMs. While so-called cardless cash access is only available at about 2,000 of the half a million or so U.S. ATMs in use today, it’s expanding rapidly and will be at as many as 95,000 machines by year end, according to payments researcher Crone Consulting.

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More than 100 technology leaders signed a letter naming Donald Trump a “disaster for innovation,” saying his views on immigration, internet security and government investment would stifle the technology industry and divide the nation.

Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, Box Chief Executive Officer Aaron Levie, EBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Qualcomm’s Irwin and Paul Jacobs, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla were among company founders, investors and employees that endorsed the letter written by Katie Jacobs Stanton, former vice president of global media at Twitter and a former special adviser on innovation at the U.S. State Department.

The values of diversity, an open exchange of ideas and regard for legal and political institutions are under threat from a potential Trump presidency, according to the letter.

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A couple of days ago we posted on VP/ECD Robin Fitzgerald’s pending departure from CP+B L.A., and now we know where she’s going: she will replace Wil Boudreau as chief creative officer at BBDO Atlanta.

The move is significant in that Fitzgerald will become the first woman to hold the CCO position at BBDO in the U.S. The network currently has several women in creative lead or co-lead positions at its offices around the world, but so far its U.S. chief creatives have been all bros. Omnicom is aware of this fact. You may recall that, during an April earnings call, CEO John Wren promised to double the number of women in creative leadership positions within the BBDO North America network over the following 12 months, and Fitzgerald’s hire brings him fairly close to fulfilling that vow.

Earlier this week, her predecessor announced that he would be leaving BBDO after 25 years, and we posted yesterday about his new job as North American CCO at WPP’s The&Partnership.

The press release tells us that Fitzgerald, who will start her now job on September 12, plans to reshape the Atlanta office alongside president and CEO Drew Panayiotou.

From David Lubars: “Not only is Robin fantastically talented, but she also understands the always-on world in which today’s clients operate, embraces technology and analytics and, generally, is someone who can lead the way forward. Plus she’s a good soul.  I am excited and flattered that Robin has agreed to join BBDO Atlanta and work with Drew to help make that agency something truly special.”

Fitzgerald spent the last decade-plus with CP+B and TBWA in Los Angeles, working on  such accounts as Gatorade, Visa, Applebee’s, A1, vitaminwater and PayPal. She played a key role in the latter’s recent Super Bowl ad, and she got promoted to VP/ECD at Crispin at the same time Kevin Jones got the CCO spot.

Panayiotou calls the hire “a no-brainer,” and Fitzgerald says, “I love places that love making great work and am looking forward to making a lot of it with the team in Atlanta.”

The CEO adds, “Robin’s prior experience, proven track record and innovative orientation make her a dream fit for what we do and what we hope to do even better for our clients. Besides, the East Coast will open up a whole new perspective after so many years on the West Coast.” We totally get it. Unfortunately, driving in Atlanta is no better than driving in L.A.

This week in social media savvy brands, MTV ousted the usual Tumblr leaders, Denny’s and Disney, to take the top spot on the platform. The music and entertainment media brand is pushing its Fandom Awards, during which online superfans are recognized for their influence. The most engaging Tumblr post in the campaign celebrates fandom for the CW series “Arrow.”

Disney did make a comeback on Twitter, though, when posted a high-def shot of the iconic rose from its upcoming “Beauty and the Beast.” The movie’s much-anticipated live-action reboot gives the brand plenty of material with which to dominate social media.

Methodology: Marketer MVPs surfaces the individual brand posts, both paid and organic, that generated the most engagement on Facebook (defined as likes, shares and comments), Twitter (retweets and likes), Instagram (likes and comments), Tumblr (original notes) and YouTube (official views, comments and thumbs-ups). Brands tracked are the 200 most-advertised brands by U.S. measured-media spending in 2014, per Ad Age Datacenter, in addition to the top 500 brands as identified in the Redbooks 500.

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