Digitas Boston Strengthens Brand Building Chops

BOSTON, Feb. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Barbara Goose, Executive Director of Digitas Boston and Detroit, announced the hire of three new leaders in the Boston office: Darren Foot, Jamie Ferreira, and Donna Tocci. Spanning the Brand Marketing, Creative, and Social Marketing capabilities, these new hires bring years of strategic leadership and experience in building active brands, as well as strong industry ties to the Boston region. Their combined experience and skill sets will help elevate brand building strategies and continue to drive deeper engagement for its clients.

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"As the top integrated brand agency and leading digital agency, we're always innovating and expanding—we're always on," said Goose. "With each new hire, we're working towards building stronger, active brands for our clients. And with the additions of Boston's top industry leaders like Darren, Jamie, and Donna, we continue to cement our status as the pre-eminent agency in the region."

These new hires come on the heels of another strong year of business growth for the Boston office. New business wins in 2010 included Aflac, Goodyear, and ConocoPhillips. In 2010, the office also received top creative honors from The FWA, OMMA, IAB MIXX, The Effies, and more.

Darren Foot, SVP, Director of Brand Marketing

Darren is helping to lead client relationships as well as drive new business for the Boston and Detroit offices. Working in partnership with Digitas' other senior leaders, he is responsible for helping to shape and execute brand campaigns for clients that will ultimately drive business results. In his new role, Darren reports into Goose.

Darren has a deep history in building powerful brands. Formerly Group Director at Modernista!, Darren oversaw the Brand Leadership Department and was jointly responsible for staffing accounts and mentoring. In addition, he drove senior level client management for a variety of brands including HUMMER and Palm.

Jamie Ferreira, SVP, Group Creative Director

Jamie is helping to lead creative across all of Digitas' GM engagements under the direction of Rob Rizzo, Executive Creative Director in the Boston office. As part of Rizzo's creative vision, Jaime will lend his extensive background in branding and digital to help Digitas drive bigger creative ideas across all channels that deepen brand engagement and inspire consumers to take action and ultimately increase market share for clients. An award-winning, accomplished creative, Jamie's work has been recognized by many major award shows, including Cannes, One Show, Kelly Awards, Graphis and Communication Arts.

Most recently, Jamie was the head of digital creation at Mullen where he ran the JetBlue, Zappos, Boston Bruins and Timberland accounts. Before joining Mullen, he was a Creative Director at Arnold on the Goodyear, Volkswagen, ESPN, RadioShack & Progressive accounts. Prior to that, a CD at McKinney where he headed up Audi, Travelocity, Nasdaq and Victory Motorcycles and was responsible for guiding and shaping McKinney's interactive creative team.

Donna Tocci, VP/Group Director, Social Marketing

Donna is helping to lead the agency's social marketing practice. In her role, she consults across the Digitas network of clients on social strategies, technologies, tactics, and trends. She reports into Anne-Marie Kline, SVP/Marketing. She joins Digitas from Ingersoll Rand where she was Director, Web/New Media, developing global social marketing and digital strategies.

Donna is a social marketing thought-leader deeply involved in the industry. In addition to her role as a Marketing Profs B2B Advisory Board member, she regularly speaks at prominent industry events and is a recipient of numerous awards including Bulldog Reporter's Awards for Excellence in Media Relations & Publicity, a Bell Ringer Award, and a Communicator Award. On Twitter @donnatocci

About Digitas

Digitas is a leading global integrated brand agency, helping the world's biggest brands develop, engage and profit from building profitable relationships with their customers. The Agency pairs media, marketing, technology, creativity, imagination and analytics to ignite emotional bonds between people and brands. Digitas also operates the brand content platform, The Third Act:, the independent healthcare marketing brand, Digitas Health, as well as Prodigious Worldwide, the world's only standalone, global digital productions company. With sister agencies Starcom MediaVest, ZenithOptimedia and Denuo, Digitas is a member of Publicis Groupe's VivaKi—a global digital knowledge and resource center that leverages the combined scale of the autonomous operations of its members to develop new services, new tools, and new partnerships.

Paris-based Publicis Groupe S.A. (Euronext Paris: FR0000130577) is the world's third largest communications group, the world's second largest media counsel and buying group, and a global leader in digital and healthcare communications. With around the world activities spanning more than 104 countries on five continents, the Groupe employs as many as 45,000 professionals.

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