Mosaic is typically seen as one of the biggest shopper agencies around, but its most recent roster moves are designed to bolster its more traditional creative capabilities.

Joining the Mosaic team are creative directors Dave Thornhill (most recently at Leo Burnett) and Jason Souce (most recently at Jack Russell), as well as associate creative director Gira Moin (who joins from FCB). In client services, Barrett Holman (most recently at Evoke Solutions) has been hired as senior director of client service, while Nicole Bakker joins from Cossette as an account director.

Mosaic has also bolstered its creative team with a pair of promotions, naming Jess Willis as VP and ECD and Ivan Druzic as VP and creative director.

Matthew Diamond, executive vice president at Mosaic North America, tells strategy that the new additions and promotions are in response to organic growth on existing clients beyond experiential, as well as new AOR wins. Diamond says the agency recently added Facebook, Shopify and Google to its list of clients. Mosaic is assisting the search engine giant with in-store selling of its Google Home and Google Home Mini in North American Best Buy and WalMart locations.

He adds that bolstering its ranks with talent from creative agency backgrounds is part of an increasing effort to “think holistically about business challenges.” He says its clients – which include Samsung, Coca-Cola and Kraft-Heinz – have a variety of needs that his agency has to be able to address on a number of fronts. While some clients some just want in-store assistance, product sampling, packaging help or to develop activations, he says others want “total integration across channels.”

For example, Stella Artois and Corona made Mosaic their AOR in 2018. Diamond says it is “doing everything for those brands” whether it’s a TV spot, piece of digital social content, sampling event, in-store shopper marketing or experiential. Last year, the agency took over a downtown Toronto street, creating “Café Artois,” for Stella Artois, where it developed an experiential platform, but also led efforts including transit wraps.media and content creation.

Diamond says the company’s roots are more in event and experiential marketing, rather than in-store and street sampling, adding that “a lot of people who are not our clients think of us as the ‘old’ Mosaic,” he says. But he wants to come back as a “totally channel-agnostic agency” to deliver the right solutions. On any given day a creative could be working on a pop up, an app, immersive VR, package design or a full length documentary, he says.