BBDO’s Matt MacDonald Lands at VCCP US

Matt MacDonald revealed his new position as chief creative officer at VCCP US.

The executive, who left his role as chief creative officer at BBDO New York earlier this month, will lead creative output for the agency in the states. He fills a role left vacant by Jed Grossman in October.

He joins VCCP’s U.S. leadership team, alongside CEO Brett Edgar and chief strategy officer Jonny Shaw.

“I’m a person who has always excelled when I’m working in a really tight team,” MacDonald told ADWEEK. “Right away, I felt like the chemistry was fantastic amongst us. That’s what immediately attracted me to VCCP and the opportunity here.”

Independent network VCCP was founded in London in 2002 and has since expanded to Madrid, Prague, Shanghai, and other cities around the world. MacDonald joins the growing stateside office after 10 years at Omnicom-owned BBDO, where he led the AT&T business. He spent the previous decade at J. Walter Thompson.

VCCP launched its U.S. outpost in 2016, and it has grown revenue double-digits for the past five years and added 10 brands to its roster this year, including Primark, Más+ by Messi, and Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

MacDonald said the opportunity to build out the growing agency’s creative department was “too great to pass up.”

“One of the best, most rewarding times I’ve ever had in my career was opening up BBDO LA after we won the AT&T business,” he said. “So, for me, getting back into building mode was an opportunity.”

In addition to hiring creative talent attracted to VCCP’s “challenger mindset,” MacDonald is hoping to create work that resonates not just across the ad industry, but in culture.

“That’s really how you get challenger brands to be noticed,” he said. “You get people talking, and you get people interested.”

For Edgar, bringing in a creative of MacDonald’s caliber allows the agency to level up its creative offering on par with its strategic offering.

“I think we have probably the best strategic offering I’ve ever seen within a U.S. agency team, and matching it with that creative powerhouse is the piece that’s been missing,” she said. “That’s the thing that is going to put us on a rocket ship.”

As VCCP scales in the U.S., it seeks to expand its client roster from challenger brands like White Claw and Tate’s Bake Shop to larger brands with big challenges to solve.

“Every brand has major challenges, and that’s what we excel at: solving business problems,” MacDonald said. “To have that challenger mindset to tackle those problems head-on is, I think, something that every single brand can’t afford not to do.”

The agency is also looking to make its own mark in the U.S. while being able to tap into VCCP’s global network for scale.

“It doesn’t feel like there’s this holding company overlord,” Edgar said. “We tap their resources and work with their teams, and they let us show up the way that it makes sense for us here.”