New Paragon creative line-up: Todd, Michaels and Vinton
Paragon London is ramping up its attack on the agency market by handing former Proximity creative partners Andy Todd and John Vinton full-time roles in an effort to strengthen its creative capabilities and boost the firm’s full-service design studio.
The company acquired one of the UK’s biggest direct marketing printers DST Customer Communications in 2017 in a deal which saw senior staff – including former COI chief Marc Michaels – and a number of clients switch to the marketing communications giant.
Although by that time DST had already shut down its in-house creative department, headed by Mike Cavers, it did retain a number of clients, including Hyundai. Paragon clients include St John Ambulance, The Royal Academy of Music and EDF Energy.
Paragon also acquired St Ives’ print management division last year, in a deal worth £11m.
Todd and Vinton have over 30 years’ experience working in integrated agencies but only started working together at Proximity in 2015. Prior to that Todd had spells at Option One, EHS, Craik Jones, WWAV and Partners Andrews Aldridge; Vinton was at TBWA, Joshua G2, and AIS London. They both left Proximity in 2017 and have been freelancing at Paragon virtually ever since.
The duo have worked across every market sector from automotive to utilities and in almost every channel; at Paragon they will report to Michaels, who is director of strategy and creativity.
He said: “Paragon has always been about delivering end to end customer communications. We think data but talk human, finding genuine insights to create engaging creative that really gets results. Following our recent success at the DMAs [it won silver for Bupa], Andy and John will help us take that to the next level.”
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