Harvest Digital grows creative team

LONDON, July 2007…Online marketing agency Harvest Digital has made two key appointments to its creative team. Rob Ryan is appointed as Creative Director and Simon Davies joins as Senior Designer. Ryan will lead the development of existing creative for current clients and direct the growth of the department. He will manage Harvest’s creative team, lead by Head of Design John Randle and a team of creatives to ensure Harvest Digital continues to produce leading-edge creative for clients including Shelter, Trader Media Group, 3M and Norwich Union.

Rob Ryan was formerly Art Director at twentysix London where he oversaw projects in the retail, FMCG and Financial sectors. Most recently he directed the creative process for the RBS account including RBS.co.uk (2007), NatWest.com (2006) and MINT.co.uk (2007). He also art directed the new proposition for The John Lewis Partnership, Greenbee, sat on the Greenbee steering committee for the new online brand, creating dialogue with above-the-line agencies to create a seamless overall creative approach and was the lead creative for the Kaiser Chiefs' site design.

Simon Davies joins from digital design boutique Fhlame where he spent two years designing online advertising campaigns and art directing site design and builds. Before that he worked as a professional freelance designer at agencies including Weapon7 where he produced interactive TV campaigns for Adidas and Hyundai, Draft where he designed campaigns for Saab and Vauxhall and Agency.com in online design and production for Cahoot.

Commenting on the appointments, Mike Teasdale, Planning Director, Harvest Digital says, ‘These are two important appointments for us as we continue to strengthen our creative department. Rob Ryan will direct all Harvest Digital’s creative projects to ensure we are offering industry leading design and creative technology to clients across all creative formats from an online display advertising campaign, to mobile, interactive TV and IPTV advertising as well as major site design and build projects. I know that Rob is particularly keen on working within our integrated setup, where he'll get the chance to develop projects very closely with our media department.’

He adds, ‘We have worked with Simon Davies in the past on a freelance basis so were keen to bring his excellent design ability in house. He has years of experience in the industry and at many competitive agencies, and has honed his skills in dynamic communicative design, branding, usability and screen visualisation across various client sectors including retail, automotive and financial services to produce first-class creative which will make him a strong addition to the team.’

Prior to twentysix London Rob Ryan worked at Conchango with responsibility for leading award-winning projects for Virgin Atlantic.com, Nectar.com, Marks & Spencer, Deloitte & Touche, HBOS and JP Morgan. He has a degree in Graphic Design from Falmouth College of Art, a BTec in Graphic Design from Northampton College and his work has won a total of three awards and was short-list for an RCA Award.

Simon Davies has a total of ten years in digital design including a year at eBay working with the design and marketing team on projects to drive traffic to the site and two months at House of Fraser working on their site. He also produced interactive television campaigns for Nissan and Britannia building Society whilst working for Sky Active in 2001 and started his career as a Junior Designer at Red Kit New Media in 1997 working on The National Lottery and Hewlett Packard. He has a HND in Graphic Design from Falmouth College of Art and an Advanced Diploma in Electronic Imaging from Bournemouth College of Art.

Also joining is Chris Webb as a junior designer who has worked for Folk Creative Marketing and has a degree in Graphic Design from University College for the Creative Arts, Epsom.

The appointments build on increasing momentum at Harvest Digital which has also made senior appointments in its media team recently and won a raft of new full service online marketing clients including CARE International, Cruise Thomas Cook and increased work from Shelter.

About Harvest Digital

Harvest Digital is a full-service online marketing agency specialising in media planning and buying, search marketing, and online marketing creative.

Formed in 2001, the company is privately owned by staff. Based in Soho in London, clients include Tesco Personal Finance, Norwich Union, Auto Trader, Thomas Cook, 3M, Tiscali, Shelter, uSwitch and CMC Markets.

www.harvestdigital.com

For further information please contact:
Joanna Burton
Head of PR

Harvest Digital

e: joanna@harvestdigital.com

t: 020 7479 7500