Y&R New York has hired Ryan Blum, Catherine Patterson and Eric Ackley. Blum joins as an executive creative director, Patterson as director of interactive and activation, and Ackley as digital experience director.
Blum will be leading the Navy Partnership and helping to launch Y&R’s Memphis office. He joins Y&R from Publicis Seattle, where he was a creative director on T-Mobile. Prior to that he worked in Dallas at The Richards Group and TracyLocke, on brands such as 7-Eleven, Samsung and Texas Lottery. He helped create The Simpsons Kwik-e-Mart for 7-Eleven, and has won awards in Cannes, The One Show, Communication Arts, the Clio Awards and the National ADDYs.
Patterson was most recently at McCann NY, where she created the agency’s interactive and experiential unit and grew it into a multi-million dollar business. She worked with Sims at McCann and led the Nature Valley Trail View project, which won multiple gold Cannes Lions and the Jay Chiat Award for Strategic Excellence. Her favorite project has been designing the digital and social media launches for the Phoenix Mars Lander program, and she launched a margarita into space for Jose Cuervo last year for National Margarita Day.
Ackley joins from sister agency Geometry Global, where he was an experience designer, developer and creative technologist. He’s worked on projects such as the Great Ritz Holiday Parade, a digital parade for Ritz Crackers; and with brands such as Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, Dos Equis, American Express, Nikon, Volvo and Charles Schwab.
Leslie Sims, chief creative officer of Y&R NY, said that the addition of Blum, Patterson and Ackley “will help us to be led more by creative and digital, to move into areas like user experience and experiential.”
