Hasta La Creative!

TBWAChiatDay New York announced three senior appointments: Josh Tavlin and Adam Wohl join the agency as group creative directors, while Natalie Puccio will serve as group planning director. Tavlin and Wohl will be responsible for leading creative on new accounts and projects, while reporting to executive creative director Matt Ian. Puccio will also work on new accounts and report to chief strategy officer Ed Castillo. LBB reports the appointments were made to staff “several new accounts including Travelers Insurance, Hearts On Fire and Pernod Ricard’s Kenwood Vineyards.”

Tavlin arrives at TBWAChiatDay following three years as a freelance writer, working with agencies including BBDO, Ogilvy & Mather and Publicis. Prior to going freelance, Tavlin served as an executive creative director with Momentum Worldwide for over a year. That followed 19 years at Ogilvy & Mather, where he served as a group creative director and worked with brands including IBM and American Express.

Wohl joins the agency from mcgarrybowen, where he has served as an executive creative director for the past two years, working with clients including Kraft/Mondelèz, United Airlines, Marriott, P&G, Chase and Verizon Wireless. While with mcgarrybowen he also worked briefly with Samsung as a creative consultant and lead on global marketing and advertising projects. Prior to mcgarrybowen, Wohl spent a little over a year as a group creative director with Chiel Worldwide. That followed a period as a freelance creative director with W+K and The Kaplan Thaler Group. Wohl was a co-founder, partner and creative director at MIR, where he spent three years and worked with clients such as General Motors, P&G, Nissan, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Unilever, Kraft and Disney.

Puccio joins TBWAChiatDay from mcgarrybowen, where she most recently served as group planning director, after initially joining in December of 2013 as a planning director, and led strategy on Verizon’s Branded Entertainment line of business. Prior to mcgarrybowen, she spent just over a year at Team One as an associate planning director, leading strategy on Lexus. Before leaving for Team One, she pent two years as a senior account planner for TBWAChiatDay, working on Pepsi and the Call of Duty franchise. She arrived at the agency following two-year stints as a brand planner for Arnold Worldwide and strategic planner for McCann Erickson.

“We’re excited to bring in this trio of talent,” CEO Rob Schwartz told LBB. “TBWAChiatDay New York is back and growing, and we’re looking to offer the best people in our industry the chance to do the best work of their careers on behalf of some of the world’s most ambitious clients.”

TBWA\Chiat\Day LA and Tool have created a neat social extension of the TVC from a couple of months ago to promote the Nissan 2014 Versa Note.

The Passion Genome site allows users to “see the passions they share with their friends illustrated in a Passion Portrait, a personalized, interactive visualization of themselves.” How does that work exactly? Well, basically you link your Facebook account to the site so it can analyze your info and you choose a photo to represent yourself. It didn’t work so well for me, but then I don’t have any decent portrait shots on Facebook (my profile pic is currently a sloth astronaut).

Nissan seems very excited about the project as Jon Brancheau, VP/marketing for the automaker’s North American ops, says in a statement,”The Passion Genome displays passions and connections in an extraordinary and fascinating way, and we at Nissan can’t wait to see how it resonates with everyone who explores it.” The project was inspired by the idea that the 2014 Versa Note has a “sculpted, modern look” that “reflects the active lives of its target buyers.” That may be a bit of a stretch, but that’s no matter. People will share this on Facebook and spread awareness for Nissan. Especially because if you share your Passion Portrait on Facebook or Twitter (using the #PassionPortrait hashtag) you could win one of eight $1,000 gift cards from Amazon.com and have your portrait featured on PassionGenome.com. Go try it for yourself, and feel free to link to your Passion Portrait in the comments section. Credits after the jump.  continued…

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