Citigate Smarts appoints homegrown joint CDs
The creative director’s role at Citigate Smarts, which will be vacated by Pete Martin later this year when he moves to New York, will be filled by Hilary Joiner and Colin Montgomery, who are to be promoted to joint creative directors.
Both have been at the agency throughout their advertising careers, joining around six years ago.
Pete Martin’s departure to the States comes after he concluded a deal to take him to New York to become creative director of Citigate Albert Frank.
The deal was partly arranged by Citigate Smarts’ regional chief executive, Rob Morrice, with whom Martin launched Smarts Advertising and Design with 13 years ago.
"I’m sorry to see him go, but I helped broker the deal because I knew the job was going and that the New York office was looking for a good British creative director," said Morrice. "Ours is one of the longer running partnerships in the business, and I intend to keep close contact with Peter to keep him involved in things over here.”
Martin has recently returned from Mexico, where he was meeting John Quarteraro, managing director of the New York agency, to discuss a client campaign, and is expected to take up his new duties from the autumn.
The firm, which employs about 50 staff, has clients that include the National Football Federation, Bloomberg and NTT-Docomo.
Meanwhile, Citigate SMARTS has scored an early success in its new Belfast office, winning a major contract from Invest Northern Ireland, the region’s economic development agency.
Invest NI has awarded a one-year contract to a special project team drawn largely from Citigate Northern Ireland and Citigate SMARTS to develop and co-ordinate an integrated communications strategy and implementation plan for its Accelerating Entrepreneurship Strategy. The contract to develop the strategy is valued at £150,000 and Invest NI estimates a £9m budget for implementing the strategy over a three-year period.