McCann Erickson in Detroit Hires Dean Bastian for Newly Formed Director of Creative Development Position

BIRMINGHAM, Mich., April 6 -- McCann Erickson's Detroit office has hired award-winning creative talent Dean Bastian as executive vice president, director of creative development, a key new role at the agency. Bastian is relocating from McCann's New York City headquarters to the evolving and growing Detroit office to take on this new position. The announcement was jointly made today by Garry Neel, executive vice president and chief executive officer at McCann in Detroit, and Dave Moore, executive vice president, chief creative officer at McCann in Detroit.

Bastian's primary responsibility will be to focus the far-reaching creative and non-traditional media resources of McCann Worldgroup on developing brand-building ideas for McCann's Detroit-based clients. Unlike a more traditional agency creative person, Bastian will seek out and develop unique client specific solutions across a variety of disciplines, with particular emphasis on new media vehicles.

"Our clients at Buick and General Motors deserve the biggest, smartest thinking a network like ours can deliver," said Neel. "A talent like Dean in a role like this makes all the sense in the world; he will have full access to the breadth and depth of unique talent at both McCann Worldgroup and IPG."

"Dean is what I call a freethinker," said Moore, who worked closely with Bastian in the New York office. "The guy's been thinking non-traditionally and media-agnostically since way before those phrases became the cliches they are today."

Prior to his current position at McCann in Detroit, Bastian was a senior vice president, group creative director at McCann in New York. His career history includes stints at JWT, Ogilvy & Mather and FCB, and his brand experience runs from AT&T to Zima. While at JWT in the early 1990s, Bastian created and ran the JWT Engine Room, an in-house "think tank" that developed unconventional creative and media solutions for select agency clients, providing the first glimpse of the radical re-invention the entire ad industry is currently experiencing.

About McCann Erickson

McCann Erickson's Detroit office creates advertising and integrated marketing communications programs for Buick Motor Division; General Motors Corporation (Corporate Advertising); Chevrolet (Global Brand Advertising); Delphi; Honeywell Consumer Product Group's Prestone, FRAM and Autolite divisions; Agilent Technologies; Capital One and a variety of other clients.

McCann Worldgroup is one of the world's largest marketing communications companies, with operations in 131 countries. It is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. .