MONO, a MDC-owned creative agency based in Minneapolis has hired José Acosta to fill a new position, director of integrated production, while promoting Steve Lynch to director of strategy.
After a nationwide recruitment campaign, Acosta joins MONO from Publicis Sapient in Miami where he led integrated production efforts for North America, guiding brands like Jeep, Fiat, T-Mobile, Unilever and Patron for the last six years. Acosta will be responsible for leading both content and digital production disciplines and growing the busy department. Also, under his leadership, will be the continued expansion and innovation of MONO’s in-house studio, The Shed. Almost every client is now actively using The Shed’s content creation and production expertise, doubling the studio’s size in the last year.
“I believe that there is an opportunity to not only build upon MONO’s impeccable track record of producing award-winning work, but also help to construct the production department of the future,” said Acosta.
Lynch has been at MONO for three years, building the connections strategy department from the ground up through his work on clients such as Google Pay, Google One and MillerCoors’ Peroni. In his new role, Lynch will bring MONO’s two distinct brand and connections strategy disciplines into one cohesive department.
“As we developed MONO’s connections strategy team, we recognized that group was bringing valuable customer insights from different perspectives and at a different stage of the strategic process than brand strategy,” said Lynch. “By deliberately weaving these highly-skilled, complementary teams together, we’ll have the most complete and cohesive view of our client’s consumers from beginning to end.” Through this holistic approach, clients will achieve more willful engagement from their consumer, something that’s of growing importance as people continue to take more and more control of their content and media experiences.
Bringing Acosta in and promoting Lynch are all part of a greater effort to strengthen key departments at MONO. Late last year, MONO hired its first first-ever executive creative director, Vanessa Fortier, and shifted two of its three founders–Michael Hart and Chris Lange–into a split role of chief creative officer. Ultimately, these shifts will set up MONO to better serve its growing list of clients, which includes MillerCoors, Walmart, Google and Sherwin Williams.
