Pearce will be responsible for leading creative across the company’s portfolio of brands, including Wonderful Pistachios, Wonderful Halos mandarins, Pom Wonderful, Fiji Water and JNSQ, the millenial-targeted wine brand the company launched earlier this year. He will report directly to agency president Michael Perdigao.

Pearce joined Wonderful Agency as executive creative director in July, arriving from David & Goliath, where he served as chief creative officer. As executive creative director, Pearce worked across Wonderful Halos, Pom Wonderful and Wonderful Pistachios.

“Bobby has quickly made his mark at Wonderful, gaining the trust and respect of his team and our clients alike,” Perdigao said in a statement. “In just a short time Bobby has developed some truly innovative work, and we will further benefit from his unique talents as we craft effective campaigns for our high-quality, healthy brands.”

Pearce takes on the role formerly held by Darren Moran, who joined Wonderful Agency as CCO from Grey New York in 2017. Moran left the agency in August, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Pearce spent four years at David & Goliath and has previously served in creative leadership roles at BBDO Atlanta and m:united. He told Adweek that his time at David & Goliath was very positive, citing the “wonderful people” and “great culture” of the agency, which he said didn’t change following Innocean’s acquisition of the formerly independent shop in 2017 and adding that he “learned a lot” from founder David Angelo.

Pearce said he had “identified The Wonderful Company many years back” as a place where he’d like to work and that he was “intrigued” about the “high-level” work they were doing in-house that “had different tones and personalities.”

“The idea of having everyone under one roof, working together was extremely appealing,” he continued. “The Wonderful Company is unique in that it has a variety of products and also allows you to balance the best of both worlds. It functions completely like an agency while being in-house.”

As to what we can expect out of Wonderful Agency under Pearce’s leadership, he alluded to an upcoming campaign for n0-shell Wonderful Pistachios and a five-part, family-friendly animated series for Wonderful Halos called Camp Halohead, premiering Nov. 18.

A Hasbro representative confirmed that Jamie Gutfreund left the company to “pursue other opportunities,” but declined to comment further.

Gutfreund joined Hasbro as chief customer experience officer in April and was tasked with leading “consumer-focused strategies that effectively connect the company’s brands with global audiences,” according to a company statement at the time. She also reported to president and chief operating officer John Frascotti.

Her tenure was uncharacteristically brief, even by the standards of marketing leadership roles. It’s unclear if Hasbro plans to replace Gutfreund in the role, which was newly-created at the time of her arrival. Hasbro does not appear to currently have a chief marketing officer, and Gutfreund’s duties seem to overlap with those typically performed by a CMO.

Before joining Hasbro, Gutfreund served as global CMO for Wunderman Thompson, following the merger of Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson last November, since 2015. She previously held roles as CMO for Engine Group’s Deep Focus and as chief strategy officer for Creative Artists Agency.

As with most marketing leadership changes, the move raises questions for Hasbro’s agency partnerships.

On the creative side of things, Grey New York won the majority of Hasbro brands in October of 2013. Hasbro consolidated the majority of its global media account with OMD the following month, while GroupM’s MediaCom retained the media business in Latin America. Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, sent its creative account to The Martin Agency in August of 2018. Ogilvy Brazil recently crafted a campaign for Hasbro challenging gender stereotypes in support of its Baby Alive doll brand.

Wayner was at R/GA for about 12 years and was the other half of the powerhouse creative leadership duo that included Chloe Gottlieb, who left for Google in May 2018. Wayner then served with Richard Ting before announcing the move to Saatchi in July 2018.

“We embrace a culture of creative bravery—it’s the lifeblood of our business,” said Shane Atchison, CEO of Wunderman Thompson North America, in a statement. “Taras is a huge talent and an even better human being.”

“As creativity continues to be the most sustainable competitive advantage for our clients, this demands a tremendous amount of diverse ability in any creative leader,” added Daniel Bonner, global chief creative officer of brand experience at Wunderman Thompson. “It calls for pioneers that can boast a unique track record of building teams, creating industry-defining work and leading brands to the most inspirational answers to problems, again and again. The good news for our agency and our clients is that Taras is most definitely a shining example of this rare breed.”

In addition to his team’s groundbreaking work for the Ad Council, Wayner has had a hand in successful campaigns for Fox, Coca-Cola, Samsung, the NFL, Nike, Verizon and Beats by Dre. The Fox Sports work nabbed a Cannes Grand Prix in 2001 and was inducted into the Clio Hall of Fame.

Wayner will report to Wunderman Thompson’s North America CEO Shane Atchison in the new role.

For its part, Saatchi & Saatchi is on the hunt for a new creative leader in the U.S. market. At the time of his appointment, Wayner took over for Javier Campopiano, who helmed the wildly successful “It’s a Tide Ad” campaign. In May 2018, the Argentinian rejoined FCB Mexico as a partner and CCO.

“I have appreciated my time with Giusy over my first two months at K-C,” Alison Lewis wrote in the memo. “Her global leadership in building our brands and marketing capabilities is evident in many spaces, especially as we work to reinvent consumer relationships.”

A Kimberly-Clark spokesperson confirmed that Buonfantino will be leaving the company on Nov. 1.

“We appreciate Giusy’s leadership over the past decade, however, we cannot comment on any additional personnel matters,” the spokesperson told Adweek.

The global marketing capabilities team will now report to Lewis, who joined the company in June after six years as CMO of Johnson & Johnson.

Buonfantino, who has been with Kimberly-Clark since 2011, was elevated to the CMO role in May 2018 after serving as president of the company’s baby and childcare business in North America.

In 2018, K-C initiated an agency review, selecting FCB over incumbent WPP to handle its more than $800 million spend. The company announces its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday.

Under Evans’ lead, Hyundai’s marketing department turned out memorable Super Bowl ads like 2019’s “Shopper Assurance” with Jason Bateman. In 2017,  the brand shot a live ad with U.S. military members during the Super Bowl. The brand hoped to follow it up the next year, but the logistics proved too difficult.

In a statement, the automaker said it would begin an “immediate search” for Evans’ replacement, and that it was “confident we will find a dynamic marketing leader who will continue to be innovative in how we reach consumers and communicate about our brand and products.”

For now, Hyundai’s chief operating officer Brian Smith,  a former Toyota executive, will lead the marketing team.

Prior to joining Hyundai Motor America, Evans served as chief marketing officer at Subaru of America from 2011 to 2014.

Travis York, CEO of GYK Antler, based in Manchester, N.H., founded York Creative Collective (YCC) and will also serve as its CEO. YCC comprises GYK Antler, production company Big Brick, direct-to-consumer footwear brand York Athletics, SaaS reporting and analytics platform Explorics, sports media platform Kompany39, drum platform Noble & Cooley, nonprofit Rock On Foundation and Iron & Air, a media platform with a content arm. YCC also has a strategic alliance with investment firm York IE, which will provide access to supplemental capital to provide scale when needed.

Pam Hamlin, who left her role as CEO of Boston agency Arnold last year, will lead strategy and operations for the collective as president.

Hamlin characterized YCC as a “a collection of very different ventures with a range of business models with marketing services at the core to accelerate growth across the portfolio,” with the disparate entities “united in the belief that creativity, quality and craft drive results and are a competitive business advantage.”

“Agency clients and our own brands and businesses alike benefit from the strategic advisory, marketing services and business operations of YCC plus access to supplemental capital through York IE when appropriate,” Hamlin told Adweek, adding that YCC entities and clients will benefit from “shared governance, oversight and back-office resources.”

In 2012, York combined Griffin York & Krause (GYK) and Antler Agency to form GYK Antler and started Big Brick Productions. Soon after, GYK Antler started building up its own emerging brands in addition to working with clients.

“It became pretty clear pretty quickly that this entrepreneurial approach was to everyone’s benefit, as it required an understanding of business acumen, inspired modern marketing and relied on a commitment to collaboration beyond anything ever seen in a typical agency-client model,” York explained.

Another Arnold veteran, Mark Battista, who formerly served as the agency’s evp for brand experience, also joined YCC’s leadership team as chief brand ambassador. Battista will also serve as managing director for GYK Antler.

GYK Antler CCO Michael Wachs will serve in that same role for York Creative Collective. Francis Ferrara and Marian Spurrier will round out the leadership team as chief financial officer and director of talent and development, respectively.

“YCC combines the freedom that being independent provides with the firepower of some of the most creatively inclined and business savvy individuals skilled at developing powerful ideas and growing businesses,” Hamlin said.

“YCC strengthens each individual venture because it enables collaboration that maximizes the business potential of each of the brands it serves,” she added. “The sum of the parts is absolutely greater than the whole, because this way of working results in collaborative programs that bring together the unique strengths of the individual ventures to benefit a client and/or a business.”

As an example, she cited YCC’s work developing a marketing program for a GYK Antler real estate development client, which includes cross-collaboration from York Athletics, Big Brick Productions and Iron & Air Media, spanning custom content across digital, experiential activations, sampling programs and brand partnerships.

York said that others could join the YCC fold in the future.

“We are always in discussions with creative entrepreneurs from emerging and established brands about how to accelerate their growth by becoming part of the collective as well as prospective clients of the venture,” he told Adweek.