Johannes Leonardo ushers in new era of creative leadership with key hires
NYC based advertising company has decided to broaden its creative department by adding on award-winning creative directors to their team.
)
NYC based Johannes Leonardo has announced the expansion of its creative department with the arrival of three award-winning creative directors, Alice Blastorah, Ray Smiling and Dan Grech.
Blastorah, Smiling and Grech signify a new era of creative leadership for Johannes Leonardo and uniquely positions the agency to continue to deliver transformational ideas to client’s like Volkswagen, Adidas Originals, MassMutual, EA Sports, Gap and others. The new faces of leadership at Johannes Leonardo also extends to the recent promotion of Omid Amidi who was elevated from ACD to Creative Director. Amidi has spent the last three years at the agency working across multiple creative projects and AOR relationships.
“We’re thrilled to welcome these incredibly talented and skilled creative leaders to Johannes Leonardo,” said Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico. “We’re fortunate enough to work with some of the most iconic brands out there, and they all come to us for one simple reason, to create transformational ideas and bring them to life in the most breakthrough way possible. In order to accomplish this, we have to continue to surround ourselves with courageous thinkers. We know Alice, Ray, Dan and Omid’s leadership is going to make an enormous difference to the accounts they touch, but also the agency as a whole.”
Blastorah joins Johannes Leonardo following three years at Saatchi and Saatchi Los Angeles where she crafted multiple-award winning campaigns for Toyota Global Olympics and Paralympics. Over the course of her career Blastorah has held Art Director roles at Deutsch LA and BBDO part of creative teams for clients including Volkswagen, Target, and Pepsico.
Smiling arrives as a Creative Director from BBDO where he worked on Foot Locker and before then from Droga5 where he was part of the creative team on the Under Armour and Covergirl accounts. Over the course of Smiling’s six year career in advertising, he has worked at notable creative agencies including 72&Sunny and R/GA on accounts such as Adidas, Beats By Dre, and ESPN.
+ membership
Access the world's largest advertising database. With an intuitive toolset that helps you explore, present and collaborate more effectively.
Learn More
Grech is formerly a creative director at Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco where he was part of the team that created insight-led concepts and campaigns for Xfinity, Tostitos and Cheetos. He also led digital creative for Jordan and Anheuser Busch at AKQA SF. Grech was recognised as one of B&T’s ‘30 under 30’, as well as winning Australia's Young Lions for film, and the inaugural Global Young Glory competition. Most recently, he was named in Adweek's Creative 100 list: celebrating America's most inventive talent in marketing, media, and tech.
Johannes Leonardo has made talent strategy a key priority as the agency continues to scale the scope of partnership with its existing clients in addition to supporting new relationships. The series of structural changes to the creative department coincides with the appointment of Debra Sercy as the agency’s new Chief Talent Officer from Grace Blue, and Jimm Lasser as Executive Creative Director from Wieden + Kennedy.
