Giant Spoon has made a name for itself in the experiential space with its epic placements for Stranger Things and Halo, but it is more than an experiential agency. With its latest hire, the agency hopes to scale up and compete on an even larger stage as a long-term partner for brands.
Giant Spoon has brought on Noel Cottrell, the former CCO of VMLY&R and Fitzco, as partner and creative chair. In the new role for the agency, Cottrell will sit on the leadership team and oversee the agency’s creative offering which includes vision, structure and business planning.
The addition of Cottrell signals Giant Spoon’s intent to compete for larger creative accounts, attract a broader range of clients and strengthen the agency’s creative lead agency role.
As the agency enters its 10th year of business, co-founder Jon Haber said Giant Spoon wants to become an even bigger player in the industry without losing its experimental and creative soul, and Cottrell seemed like the perfect person to bring on for that task.
“He knows how to make breakthrough creative work and to respect all the weird and wild stuff Giant Spoon’s become famous for, but he knows how to ladder that up into these bigger conversations for larger brands, global campaigns and platforms. That is going to change the dynamic of where we’re able to play without losing the heart of what made us special,” Haber told Adweek.
Cottrell was most recently CCO of VMLY&R’s global head office in Kansas City, Mo., overseeing creative with a focus on the Wendy’s and Coca-Cola accounts. Prior to that, he spent 10 years as CCO of Fitzco/McCann, creating award-winning work for Coca-Cola, French’s Mustard and Checkers & Rally’s.
Originally from South Africa, Cottrell co-founded two successful South African advertising agencies, Joe Public and FoxP2, before moving to the U.S. where he worked as an executive creative director at Grey New York and steered the E*Trade and Febreze accounts.
A reputation built on vomiting babies and mustard ice cream
For Cottrell, Giant Spoon—which was named Adweek’s Experimental Agency of the year in 2019—seemed a perfect landing place considering the kind of groundbreaking work he had helmed, including the E*Trade baby vomiting during a Super Bowl ad, Febreze’s blindfold tests, French’s Mustard Ice Cream and the Rick Ross Checkers documentary.
“I’ve always felt that when I started to get into the ‘stir shit up’ ethos of Giant Spoon, it fit in with the kind of work I’ve tried to do in my career,” Cottrell told Adweek. He explained that the Febreze blindfold work started as a stunt and grew into a global campaign that ran for five years, and it’s that kind of scaling on big brand platforms that he can bring to Giant Spoon.
Cottrell as partner will help guide the business, vision and creative story for Giant Spoon, while Haber will focus on business development, high-level client relationships and building future products and business units for the agency.
The new structure will also find Ian Grody, the agency’s first executive creative director, elevated to chief creative officer, reporting to Cottrell. Grody has been crucial in executing top campaigns since starting with the agency in 2018 and he will continue to oversee creative teams in New York and Los Angeles.
Interpreting how people experience brands
Giant Spoon sees itself as an agency that is great at expanding the way people experience brands and how brands interact with their customers in culture, content and in media. Haber added that Cottrell will help build upon that reputation and help make Giant Spoon a lead agency for a brand to tell its entire story rather than just pieces of that story.
“Some of the fame of our experiential work has made it so we’ve had to go out and say, ‘Hey, we’re also a strategy agency, a creative agency, a social agency, an experiential agency and we weave all those things together really well.’ Noel is also a signal to the marketplace that we’re taking that role even more seriously,” said Haber.
While the industry has trended away from AOR relationships, Haber sees that Giant Spoon can have more long-term partnerships that feel like an AOR with a client, and investing in its leadership team and building relationships at the CMO level with brands will help it get to that next level.
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