Doner hires Tito Melega as its new global chief creative officer

Doner has hired Tito Melega as its newest global chief creative officer, replacing Eric Weisberg, who left the agency in July to take on a global chief creative officer role with Havas Health & You. Subscribe to Ad Age now for award-winning news and insight. Melega will oversee creative across all the agency's offices in Detroit, Los Angeles and Norwalk, Connecticut. He will start his new position this week and be based in the shop's Motor City headquarters. The hire was made after an “exhaustive” search, said David DeMuth, CEO of Doner, who says he spoke to around 20 different people. “I was drawn to [Melega] for a number of reasons,” DeMuth said. “He seemed so enthusiastic about the opportunity and as I dug deep into his body of work that he's been responsible for and led through the years I was really moved by not just the advertising work, but the digital work. We continue to evolve Doner to be more of a digital-first thinking agency, and somebody with Tito’s experience is going to help continue to propel us forward. I want a partner to help create and raise standards. We’re not so huge that these jobs become figurehead-type things.” Prior to this role Melega most recently served as a global chief creative officer at GTB, WPP’s agency dedicated to its Ford account. The account is now being led by Jason Xenopoulos who also maintains his role as VMLY&R’s North America co-chief creative officer. Doner has had some significant momentum as of late. In April the agency picked up creative account wins for Johnson & Johnson’s brands Aveeno Baby and Johnson’s Baby. This followed J&J moving its Tylenol, Listerine and Zyrtec creative accounts to the Stagwell Group agency in 2019. In May, the agency was also named creative agency of record for Travelocity. Weisberg was pivotal to Doner landing accounts with J&J, which followed him from Wunderman Thompson. However, DeMuth isn’t concerned about losing any work with the brand. “Like most smart, thoughtful clients, J&J hired an agency, not a person,” he said. During the Association of National Advertisers' Masters of Marketing Conference earlier this month, J&J’s global president of self-care spoke about the importance of creating diverse content, which was a point J&J had emphasized to its top agencies and digital platforms Google, Facebook and Amazon last year. During the conference, Manoj Raghunandan pointed out Doner’s “Care Without Limits” ad for Tylenol as a perfect example of the type of multicultural work he looks for. “If you can commit, the business results will come,” Raghunandan said, also noting that “our Hispanic advertising has a higher-dollar ROI than any of our general population advertising.” The J&J account wins have led to an expansion for the Doner team. Just this year the agency has brought on Lauren Turner as executive VP, brand strategist; Natalia Casas as VP, brand strategy; and Tarik Cox as senior VP, brand leader, to work on different aspects of the J&J portfolio. Also this year, Doner also brought on James Adamé as executive VP, director of design for its Detroit office and Shelia Minetola as director, DEI. Subscribe to Ad Age now for award-winning news and insight. Melega, who is originally from Argentina, has worked across a number of diverse teams for agencies like CPB along with Omnicom Group's TBWA/Chiat/Day and BBDO. His work spans brands like Nissan, Toyota, Sony, ESPN, Amazon, Lexus, Infiniti, Holiday Inn, Miller Lite, and Pepsi. One of his most notable pieces of work is the “Heisman House” campaign for Nissan which had it’s 11th iteration launched in September. While Melega has extensive experience with marketing for automotive companies—and Doner handles several Stellantis brands—he was attracted by Doner’s diverse portfolio. “Jeep was my very first car here in this very town [in Argentina] when I was 16 years old,” Melega said. “So there's a connection to one of our clients that you can't buy, but the cool thing about Doner is its history and the fact that it has the most diverse client base of any agency in Detroit, so that to me is terribly challenging and exciting at the same time.”

Doner hires Tito Melega as its new global chief creative officer

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