Mass Minority looked south of the border to hire a familiar face, bringing Jack Perone back to Canada as chief strategy officer in its Toronto office.
On top of leading strategic planning, Perone will focus on integrating Mass Minority’s data-driven technology platforms into how it delivers content and how its clients do business. Perone said in a release that the focus on both talent and technology is what attracted him to the agency.
“Bringing data, media and creativity together to drive better business results through mass attraction methodologies was something I had to be a part of,” he said. “Brett [Channer, Mass Minority’s founder and CCO] is building the agency of the future from the ground up, not by bolting on data and analytics to a legacy structure like many network agencies do, but instead [Mass Minority] is investing in the data platforms needed to drive business.”
Perone joins after four years in the chief strategy officer role at DDB Chicago. It’s a role he took in 2014 after 18 years at J. Walter Thompson Canada, where he was VP and director of strategic planning at the time of his departure.
During his time at DDB, Perone worked with clients both in Chicago and San Francisco, including LifeLock, Fiat Chrysler, Miller Lite and State Farm. While with JWT, he worked with brands including Johnson & Johnson, Kit Kat and Grand Marnier.
Esme Rottschafer previously led strategy at Mass Minority. She also concurrently managed a separate business design and strategy consultancy called Field Marshal (along with the consultancy’s creative director Tyler Serr), which Rottschafer recently decided to focus on.
Channer told strategy that the agency supports Rottschafer’s venture and will continue to call on Field Marshal when its expertise is required. He says now is “a perfect time” to bring Perone on, based on the agency’s recent growth. Some of the newer business Mass Minority has picked up includes Ancestry, Metro and Beattie’s.
This is the most recent example of Channer looking to the U.S. for a major hire: in 2017, he brought on former Anomaly managing director Brent Rivard as president and McCann Detroit’s Gary Holme as director of art and content.