Hasta La Creative!

As we told you two days ago, McCann has indeed poached Senior Creative Director Grant Smith, best known for his work on AT&T, from BBDO.

The press release gives us a few additional details: it appears that Smith will indeed be working under newly-minted North American CCO Eric Silver–and he’s not the only creative McCann hired.

In addition to Smith, Caprice Yu will also join the agency as ECD.

Yu had been freelancing for McCann for the past several months after leaving her ECD position at Sid Lee New York. She served as art director at 180 Amsterdam and BBH New York before leaving for an interactive ACD role at CP+B in 2010 along with Tim Geoghegan (currently creative director at New York’s TM Creative). After just over a year with Crispin, she returned to BBH, which promoted her to CD in 2012 before she left for Sid Lee.

The McCann release also included a new headshot for Smith:

The money quote from Silver:

“We are truly excited to welcome Grant and Caprice. They both have an amazing history of answering creative briefs in thoughtful and provocative ways.”

The two new ECDs will presumably work across multiple accounts and report to Silver, who in turn reports to McCann Worldgroup Creative Chairman Rob Reilly.

This week we received a few tips claiming that CarMax — used car retailer, Fortune 500 company, buyer of Super Bowl ad spots — might be shopping around for a new agency.

The agency (formerly Amalgamated, in which DDB vet Eric Silver bought a controlling stake) has counted CarMax as a client for several years, most recently earning extensive media attention for the “Slow Clap” spot that aired during this year’s Super Bowl.

Yes, there was a puppy version. The campaign marked an extremely successful return to Super Bowl ads for CarMax, which sat out the big game for two years. It also prompted calls by consumer groups for the FTC to sue the company for false advertising, but there have been no updates on those claims since June.

Our sources claim that Silver+Partners will not be working on this year’s CarMax Super Bowl spot and that the company may be looking for a new creative AOR; we’ve received no comment from the agency after repeated requests.

(On a side note, CarMax was the first brand to abandon the L.A. Clippers in the wake of Donald Sterling’s infamous time in the media spotlight this spring.)

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We truly had no idea the creative account was in review for retail chain Burlington Coat Factory, where we’ve bought our share of oversized jackets and what not back in the day for half the price. But apparently, it is so, and from what we’re hearing from sources in the know, Silver+Partners–aka, the Eric Silver-run, New York-based shop formerly known as Amalgamated–is in the mix. S+P would not comment on the matter and we’ve yet to hear back from BCF, which has worked most recently with Cramer-Krasselt.

Building on what we initially reported a month ago, C-K hasn’t worked with the brand for the past three months and only did project work involving concepting creative but did not produce actual creative, which was handled in-house by the client. This, like before, leaves us a bit confused considering that in 2008, it was reported that Burlington Coat Factory awarded the agency its creative duties following a review. Whatever the case, C-K was invited to participated in BCF’s current review, but declined. While spies are saying Silver+Partners is taking on the biz, we’re hearing that it’s yet to be awarded. We’ll keep you posted.

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