DDB Group Aotearoa NZ has roped in Matty Burton as its first Group Chief Creative Officer. In the new role, Burton will be spearheading all the operations related to generating creative output across the company’s four agencies in New Zealand, DDB, Track, Tribal and Mango. Following this appointment, Gary Steele, Executive Creative Director of DDB Aotearoa has been promoted to the position of Chief Creative Officer. He will be assisting and working closely with Burton.

Prior to this, Burton was serving Google as the APAC region’s Creative Chief based in Sydney. Having over two decades of industry experience, Burton has achieved numerous accolades in his career such as establishing Special Group’s Australian offices, and made significant contributions at TBWA in Australia. Previously, he has also worked at Droga5 in New York and served as the Creative Group Head at Saatchi & Saatchi NZ.

On his appointment, Burton said, “I am excited to be ‘coming home’ to an agency with creativity at its core. Working at Google as their APAC creative chief was an incredible experience and a career highlight but there’s a difference between working somewhere where creativity is one part of the process, versus an environment where creativity is infused at every step of the journey.”

Calling Burton the amalgamation of brilliant leadership and creativity, Priya Patel, New Group CEO said, “Matty’s diverse multidisciplinary experience as a creative leader is fairly unique and we believe that with his skills and the existing capability in our building, we’ll be unstoppable.”

On the coming together of Burton and Steele, Patel said, “With Gary and Matty at the helm of New Zealand’s largest creative department, supported by some of the market’s best multidisciplinary marketing talent, we believe DDB Group will continue to bring world class, end to end brand experience capability that drives local growth and gets global recognition.”