12854: At Grey, Integrating Is Grating.

Adweek reported new Grey New York Chief Strategy Officer Jonathan Lee is focused on integrating creativity and technology at his new workplace. Um, despite having a Black CEO, the White advertising agency hasn’t even managed to integrate different generations—and Grey has fumbled in its attempts to foster cultural integration too. As previously noted, the industry’s inability to integrate digital mirrors the failure to integrate anything and everything else.

Grey New York’s New Chief Strategy Officer Will Help Integrate Creativity and Technology

Jonathan Lee brings track record of success

By Marty Swant

Starting today, Jonathan Lee is the new chief strategy officer at Grey New York.

Lee joins the agency from Huge, where he spent three years as global managing director of planning and strategy. Prior to that, he held senior leadership roles in strategic and account planning at both traditional and digital agencies, including the digital agency Rosetta and TBWA\Chiat\Day New York.

Grey North America CEO Michael Houston said Lee will be tasked with evolving the Strategy Group at Grey, where he will drive development and implementation of a single point of view encompassing every aspect of the agency.

“It’s been said that the future of advertising lies at the intersection of creativity, data, media and technology,” Houston said. “Jonathan brings a track record of success in all of these areas as well as traditional brand planning.”

In an interview with Adweek on Monday afternoon, Lee said his experience at both traditional and digital agencies provides the background necessary for understanding and implementing integration. He said it’s important to maintain the integrity of each component while also applying them in the “right way at the right time.”

“The analogy I use is sausage,” Lee said. “You recognize the ingredients, but you get something different out of it.”

In recent years, Grey New York has doubled in size. Enhancing its talent, creative products and digital capabilities has led to heightened new business performance, and the company says it’s on pace in 2015 for a seventh year of record financial and creative performance. Key new business wins have included The Whitney Museum of American Art, Pandora and Folgers Coffee. The success has also led to a number of awards. This year at Cannes, Grey New York was the second most-awarded office in the world.

“We have the collective firepower to actually realize the ideas,” Lee said. “Now we have to get the strategic alignment to support them so they will be even bigger and even better.”