Burns Group Appoints Arturo Gigante as Chief Creative Officer

Fast-growing independent agency Burns Group, is hiring award-winning creative industry veteran Arturo Gigante to become the agency’s first ever chief creative officer. The hire comes as BG has added numerous new clients to its roster and is experiencing organic growth from its established client base.  

“Burns Group has always been a strategic powerhouse, and hiring Arturo means that our pursuit of game-changing ideas will be accelerated by even more creativity,” explained BG CEO, Jo McKinney. “Our clients are like us – they are brands disrupting the status quo. Hiring Arturo enables us to blow up more legacy ways of working.  We’re building new kinds of collaboration across the agency to break down traditional structures that historically create a passing of the baton between strategy and creativity vs. more immersive collaboration.”

At BG, Gigante will expand the agency’s creative team and is actively recruiting from a diverse pool of candidates.  He will also be reuniting with a former strategic partner, Chamie Baldwin, whom he worked with at Ogilvy, who is now BG’s Chief Strategy Officer. 

“Growing up in Puerto Rico taught me the value of diverse perspectives, which is as true in life as it is in the creative process,” Gigante said. “Great work starts with great strategy and gets elevated through collaboration, not decision making in silos. Over the course of my career, the work I’ve been most proud of has been the byproduct of teams bringing talent and resources together to find innovative solutions for brands. I’m so excited for the opportunity to eliminate boundaries, reframe agency roles, and create a culture where big ideas come first.”

He is joining BG from his own agency SPORK, which he co-founded in 2013 after a 14-year tenure at Ogilvy where he created award winning work for such clients as Fage Yogurt, Kodak, IBM and other leading brands. At SPORK, he worked on a wide array of  projects for such brands as SNY, Google, Honora, and others. He began his career as an art director at Baltimore agency tbc and also worked at Doner.

“Arturo is what I call the perfect ‘idea mate,’ he’s someone who sees creative as a verb, an active process that brings everyone together to share and develop ideas,” said Chamie Baldwin. “Most importantly, we’re both always chasing goosebumps…that moment when an idea, goes from good to great.”

Over the past year, BG has attracted a wide array of disruptive brands, adding significant new accounts to its roster including McCain Foods, Niagara Chocolate, Fastaff, Trubiotics, Luxe Valut, Dntl Bar, Marley Spoon, TMRW and others. The agency also has long-standing clients including Labatt, Ricola, Columbia Business School, GSK,  Simmons Mattress, Catalyst and others.