Fuse has grown its creative team and added a new customer-experience focused strategy role as it continues with its plans to build a more robust offering.

The agency has hired Lanny Geffen as its director of customer experience, a new strategy role at the agency. He will report directly to Fuse’s managing director, Bridget Westerholz, who was hired earlier this year.

Geffen is returning to the agency side, having most recently been VP of product design at fintech company Koho. Prior to that, he was OneMethod’s VP and director of strategy and user experience, where he worked with Steve Miller, who joined Fuse as its first ECD in March.

In Miller’s creative department, Fuse has hired the team of art director Becky May (previously at Rethink) and copywriter Darren Marranca (previously at Zulu Alpha Kilo). It has also added two more art directors: Ryan Fox (a freelancer who previously had permanent stints at Sid Lee, Union and Publicis) and Chloe Kim (most recently at Grey).

These are the first key creative hires Miller has made since joining Fuse, which came with a mandate to “rebuild” the shop’s creative department. Miller tells strategy that there was a gap in the agency’s offering to its clients and that the hires are a result of what they have been asking for of late.

With the combination of the creative hires and Geffen’s strategic experience, Miller says the team now is better able to develop more human-centric insight points. “We also have a stronger UX and design presence which will certainly allow us to more confidently take on those types of projects, which we’ve already started doing with CIBC and Ricola,” Miller says.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) recently named Fuse as its Canadian social media and experiential AOR, a client the agency secured because of its background in tourism and experiential work for clients like Fairmont Hotels, according to Fuse president Stephen Brown.