Colenso promotes Vicars & Devereux

AUCKLAND, Thursday: Colenso BBDO has confirmed the new creative leadership of the agency. Simon Vicars will step into the CCO role and Maria Devereux has been promoted to chief innovation officer (to add to her existing ECD title).

Vicars has featured in the Cannes Lion Top Ten rankings for the past decade. Of the 44 Cannes Lions he won as a Copywriter, almost half are Gold, Grand Prix and Titanium.

Vicars has worked in New Zealand, Berlin and most recently London – where he was creative director at adam & eve DDB. While there he helped the UK hot shop win Cannes Agency of the Year in 2018, and created the much celebrated Don’t spread the hate campaign for Marmite.

Prior to joining adam & eve, he spent six years at Colenso where he created DB Export Brewtroleum, The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme, Samsung’s Smart Phone Line and DB Export’s War on Wine.

He started his career at DDB Auckland.

“Leading Colenso comes with a legacy to live up to. Maria and I look forward to partnering closely with our clients, and getting on with it.”

Devereux’s career has also spanned two countries, allowing her to build a body of work steeped in innovation across both Canada and New Zealand. At Taxi Canada, Devereux wrapped a New York water tower in 50km of yarn for D&AD’s call-for-entries campaign, and in her time at Colenso BBDO she’s helped create the Yellow Treehouse, relaunched the State Insurance brand and has been awarded gold or grand prix for her work on NZ Breast Cancer every year for the last four years.

“Her Pedigree SelfieSTIX campaign saw Colenso become a global innovation hub for Mars.

In 2020 she was recognized at Campaign Asia’s Women Leading Change Awards. She’s a passionate member of the Mentally Healthy Change Group and is currently working to develop a mentor based leadership program designed to create new pathways into our industry.

Colenso MD Angela Watson said, “Simon and Maria are homegrown world-class talent who spent formative years at Colenso, headed off overseas to gain international experience and recognition, before returning home to us.

Simon Vicars said, “Leading Colenso comes with a legacy to live up to. Maria and I look forward to partnering closely with our clients, and getting on with it.”