Darren Moran

As Head of Innovation for Grey New York, Darren Moran is helping to grow the agency by creating new kinds of brand experiences and by experimenting with new forms of collaboration. He is also the Creative Lead for Grey Adventures, a new practice responsible for developing tech, product and entertainment IP for the agency and its clients.

Previously, Moran was Chief Creative Officer of Gotham Bacon Concern, a creative consultancy/production studio he founded in 2014 with a simple mission: to help brands grow by putting the audience first, with culture-driving work that entertains and enlightens. For clientThe New York Times, Moran worked with Editor-in-Chief Jake Silverstein to relaunch the Sunday Magazine as a richer leisure experience; developed and marketed the NYT app for the Apple Watch; evolved the broader NYT digital strategy to attract a younger audience, bringing it to life with the “Made for our Times” campaign; and helped hardcore fans get even closer to the NYT stories and people with a revamped Times Insider product and its invitation, “Welcome to the Newsroom.” For KIND Bars, Moran wrote and directed the brand’s first national broadcast and social media film campaign, and penned a dramatically kind epic Twitter battle with JetBlue. Other clients included Halos Mandarins, POM Wonderful, FIJI Water, and the Nat Geo series, Years of Living Dangerously.

Prior to striking out on his own, Moran was North American Chief Creative Officer for Havas Worldwide and a founder of the Global Creative Council. As CCO, he oversaw all agency work on a wide range of “traditional,” integrated and digital/social accounts such as Dos Equis, Ritz, Reckitt-Benckiser, Hershey, IBM and Johnnie Walker. In the first year, he doubled the agency’s award show tally, including an inaugural Creative Data Lion at Cannes and gongs for the groundbreaking Dos Equis Oculus Rift VR experience. Moran also helped grow the New York office by 25%, with new business wins that included the fully-integrated AOR accounts of Keurig, PayPal, Liberty Mutual, TD Ameritrade and Malaria No More; digital AOR duties for NetJets and Diageo; and Olympic activation projects from Coca-Cola. In what was a very busy first year, he also helped build one of the largest and most profitable agency content studios in the country, integrated the creative department and innovation lab to enable quicker and more relevant digital product innovations, and made design thinking a priority by setting up both graphic design and digital platform design practices.

From 2010 to 2012, as CCO of FCB New York, Moran turned a five-year revenue decline around, with account wins that included Gevalia Coffee (integrated), the US Freeskiing team (design and product), The Jamaica Tourist Board (integrated), and BarclayCard (digital AOR). Under his leadership, the agency’s improved creative work helped rejuvenate Oreo, resulting in double digit sales growth and metal in every major award show, including a Cyber Grand Prix at Cannes and a Facebook Studios Blue award for The Daily Twist.

From 1997 to 2010, Moran was Global ECD at Young & Rubicam, where he worked across 60 offices worldwide to create award-winning integrated campaigns for LG, Xerox, Chevron, Bacardi, Burger King, Cellular South, AT&T, MTV and many others.  He helped transform LG from a cheap Korean alternative into a respected, high-end global brand, and led the effort to completely change how people viewed Xerox around the world. He was a member of the Y&R Global Creative Board and won the NY office’s first One Show pencils in 20 years, and the Y&R network’s first (and second) ever Integrated awards.  His Lions for LG contributed to Y&R NY being named the second most awarded agency in the world at Cannes in 2010.

Moran began his career at BBDO, where he worked on GE, Visa, Hyatt, Frito-Lay and Pizza Hut, helping the shop win Agency of the Year from both AdWeek and AdAge.