WCRS has lost its interactive creative director, Steve Vranakis, who has been poached by FCB in San Francisco. Vranakis has led WCRS's e-brands digital division since it was set up at the beginning of the year, and was instrumental in creating and building the department.
Vranakis will join Rooney Carruthers at FCB San Francisco. Carruthers, WCRS's former creative director, left the agency in April.
WCRS e-brands houses the agency's dotcom clients as well as all of its online production talent. Chris Herd, the group director of e-brands, said: 'Although Steve's departure won't be a loss to our dotcom clients, he has led us into the online creative field fantastically and brought with him a lot of valuable learning from the West Coast of the US. He wants to be back there to continue to do so.'
Vranakis said: 'I'm extremely proud of what we've achieved at WCRS. The decision to leave wasn't easy, but FCB represents an incredible opportunity.
'Its culture is very open - they want the best possible online creative product and I'm looking forward to making the most of that.'
The news of Vranakis's departure comes near the end of a troubled year for WCRS, which lost major accounts including Orange, Land Rover and Bass.
E-brand's digital strategist, Vicky Grinnell, also left the agency earlier this year to go to the new-media consultancy Decipher.
During his time at e-brands, Vranakis worked on digital campaigns for Orange, Land-Rover and BMW. The last campaign which he produced was the BMW 'superstitial' online rich-media ad.
In his previous role as the creative director at Modem Media, he was shortlisted at the Cannes Advertising Awards for his work for Vaseline.
