Blue scores coup with global CCO hire

Global - Former CEO for XM Asia Pacific, Josh Sklar joins Blue in the newly created role of global chief creative officer on 1 November, and will lead the agency's creative teams in Singapore, China, Japan, London and California.

The announcement sees one of the top leaders of the agency's main competitors XM migrate over to Blue and comes almost four months after Marketing broke the news of Blue's acquisition by WPP Digital.

Sklar will initially be based in California but will relocate to Singapore in January 2008. Sklar was also formerly chief creative officer for XM Worldwide before leaving the agency and Singapore in 2003.

"It is much harder for the traditional ATL creative agencies to try to learn data, segmentation and optimisation; than it is for Blue to take our existing online creative leadership and apply it to the next generation of TVC's, where time-shifting and place-shifting are the new realities. Josh is truly a rare gem in our industry, merging these two worlds," Jay Shapiro, CEO for Blue said.

According to Shapiro, Sklar will be responsible for extending the agency's digital creative leadership, by taking the company's data-centric approach to creative design and applying it to new measurable media such as interactive TV and digital printing DM's.