Donovan Bryan has been appointed as an executive creative director at independent agency OwenKessel. Bryan previously filled the roles of creative director at DDB and Grey Worldwide and of senior art director at Brand Activation. He also had a long tenure at TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS.
Says Felix Kessel, co-founder of Owen Kessel: “Donovan has always had a penchant for doing things differently and his body of work has a profound sense of unease with the status quo. You’ll see a constant challenge and pushing of boundaries and borders – sometimes spectacularly successful and others spectacularly wrong. But always spectacular.’
Bryan particularly likes the fact that OwenKessel is independent. He continues: “Independent agencies celebrate creativity first and believe that profit will follow and OwenKessel is no different. Under guys Like Felix and Vaughn Owen, who share my belief that advertising can and should be so much more, I believe I will get the chance to do great work.’
Kessel notes that from early on Bryan has had a love/hate relationship with traditional advertising. “Donovan has achieved great success but always there is the disquiet that accompanies it, the quest for a better way to do it, a more relevant or impressive way to make it work.
“It’s almost as if from the get-go Donovan realised that things were changing and he needed to keep a pace ahead. Consequently a lot of his best work turned out to be ahead of its time and only gets recognition in retrospect. Then again, that’s exactly why we’ve hired him – to lead from the front, to be the herald of innovation for the clients we have, and the ones we’ll get, that are hell–bent on redefining how they interact with their market, realising that more cohesive relationships are more rewarding and consequently more profitable for them.’
