Don McKinney Joins Grey New York in New Position as ECD/Director of Digital Development

May 5, 2008 | 4:46 pm

NEW YORK, May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Tor Myhren, Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer of Grey New York, announced today that Don McKinney has joined Grey as Executive Creative Director / Director of Digital Development. This marks another key appointment in the transformation of Grey New York's Creative Department.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080505/NYM161 )

McKinney will lead the expansion of Grey New York's digital creative capabilities within the agency. In his new role, McKinney will work closely with Tor Myhren to build a creative environment that blends traditional and digital branding seamlessly.

"This guy is so far ahead of where our industry is in the digital space, it's scary," said Myhren, who first met and worked with McKinney at Wongdoody and subsequently collaborated with him at TBWA/Chiat/Day and Leo Burnett. "I can't wait to see the impact he has on our agency and our clients."

Don McKinney joins Grey from Cole & Weber United in Seattle where he was a Partner. Before that, Don headed up Tequila interactive, Chiat/Day's digital arm, where he wrote, developed and rolled out globally the 'SHIFT_' campaign for Nissan, which is credited with helping in Nissan's astonishing turnaround. He was Executive Creative Director at ARC, where he helped General Motors form a watershed partnership with Google, Facebook and made Pontiac the first major advertiser on Second Life. McKinney is also a successful painter; writes screenplays and books, and is an ordained minister. He has an aversion to award shows.

Grey New York President Steve Hardwick said of McKinney, "Some of the most respected and creative minds in our industry call Don a visionary, a guru, a huge thinker, a fearless creative thinker, planner and writer. We just call him 'Don,' and we're thrilled to have him lead and continue to build-out our mushrooming digital practice in New York."

McKinney is the second major hire Myhren has made, both in recent weeks, since joining Grey and helping to win the E*Trade account in December. On April 22, Myhren announced the hire of the award-winning South African creative director Noel Cottrell to head E*Trade Creative as ECD.

About Grey: Grey New York is the flagship and largest office of Grey, a unit of Grey Group. Grey Group ranks among the largest global communications companies. Its parent company is WPP (Nasdaq: WPPGY). Grey Group's total offer includes G2, activation marketing; GHG, healthcare communications; MediaCom, media planning and buying and GCI Group, public relations. Grey New York's blue-chip client roster includes many of the world's best known companies: Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, Diageo, Darden Restaurants, Wyeth, Canon, 3M, Eli Lilly, Dairy Queen and E*Trade.