Independent creative agency Barton F. Graf has brought Jeff Benjamin on board as partner, executive creative director. Reporting directly to CCO Gerry Graf, Benjamin will be instrumental in creative direction on new and existing clients. He will also become key in growing the agency’s range of disciplines in support of breakthrough creative ideas across all channels.
Prior to joining Barton, Benjamin was a creative consultant within Bark & Co., a petcare start-up that raised $60 million in Series C funding last year. While at Bark & Co., he touched everything from brand strategy to marketing to product innovation. Notable recent roles for Benjamin include serving as CCO at JWT, North America and at Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
Graf said, “Jeff and I have been talking about what it would be like to work together for years. I asked him to join Barton when we first started 6 years ago, but the timing wasn’t right. Since then, we’ve spent a lot of time together judging shows, as members of the Facebook Creative Council–we even gave Jeff office space at Barton when he was working on his own projects. That’s when Barney [Barton F. Graf CEO Robinson] and Laura [chief strategy office Janness] really got to know him, and we all knew we belonged together. Jeff and I think a lot alike–we’re both as strategic as we are creative. We just execute our ideas in different ways. His biggest asset has always been his versatility of thinking across channels and his optimism for experimentation, and those traits have been refined even more after working on the client side for the last year.”
Benjamin added, “Gerry has always had an unapologetic love of advertising, and so have I. But as I got to know Laura and Barney – it became clear that we also all shared the same ambition to create ideas that weren’t limited to an archaic definition. To us, anything and everything that finds its way into culture–moving people, helping people, and making them feel differently about brands to create growth–is marketing. And while this new definition of advertising starts to emerge, it will always begin with simple, iconic ideas.”
During his career, Benjamin has navigated clients through the constantly evolving landscape with great success, helping to create notable campaigns like American Express’ “Small Business Saturday,” Best Buy’s “Twelpforce,” and Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice.” Benjamin spent over eight years at CP+B, initially joining as interactive CD and eventually moving up to CCO/partner. Soon after, he made his way to JWT, working on campaigns for Macy’s, Puma, Nokia, Google, Rolex and Johnson & Johnson, among others. His ability to lead multi-national marketers to experiment and break ground has continually opened up new doors for brands such as Best Buy, Coke Zero, Domino’s Pizza, Microsoft and Kraft.
The hiring of Benjamin follows a series of other key additions at Barton F. Graf last year, including Dominic Poynter as head of communications strategy and Nate Naylor as group creative director. This past year, the agency brought on assorted new clients and grew organically across its current roster. It also expanded its services with the formalization of a dedicated communications planning practice and the addition of an in-house production company, Barton F. Productions.
