Modem's Griffiths prepares to fly the new-media flag at WCRS.(Brief Article)

Mark Griffiths is ringing out the old and bringing in the new, Deborah Bonello says

Mark Griffiths looks slightly uncomfortable, as if he would rather be somewhere else. But last week's news that he is to be the new interactive creative director at WCRS has aroused Campaign's curiosity -- hence the attention. Griffiths has emerged from the old school digerati to take up perhaps his biggest challenge yet at WCRS. His brief? To integrate the old and new creative disciplines within the agency.

It's been said a million times, but is much less easily done. Having traditional ad creatives working alongside new-media designers and art directors is an art that few, if any, agencies have perfected. In all fairness, such an initiative has been taken by a number of the traditional advertising agencies but practising what they're preaching has yet to become a reality.

Griffiths picks up the gauntlet at WCRS from his predecessor Steve Vranakis, who founded the agency's e-brands division and was a former colleague of his at Modem Media. However, the prospect of FCB San Francisco proved too good to resist for Vranakis, who left to return to the States in November last year.

Originally from Nottingham, Griffiths was chucked out of art college at the age of 17 for what he vaguely refers to as bad behaviour (accompanied by an obscenely mischievous twinkle in his eye). He is a prime example of bad boy done good. Having lost faith in the system, he spent the next few years working in music production and graphic design, and creating backdrops for music gigs, installations and club nights. It wasn't until he was 25 that Griffiths returned to college, to study graphic design and communications in Croydon, and discovered Modem Media through a friend of his working there.

Up until then, he had no newmedia portfolio. Griffiths isn't your stereotypical new-media creative whizz-kid, beavering away in a darkened bedroom learning how to code. Creativity has always, been primarily about ideas, and both Modem and Vranakis, who was the interactive creative director at the agency at the time, recognised that straight away.

So Modem Media took him on in a senior art director role from scratch. The digital shop's talent for, well, talent spotting was not missed by the other agencies, and in fact it has proved to be a fertile hunting ground for many, both new media and traditional. Gluemedia's Mark Cridge was a former colleague of Griffiths at Modem, as was Jason Young, formerly the creative director at Agency.com and now at Pixelpark.