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.
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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.