LONDON — M&C Saatchi Talk has appointed Will Cooke as its new head of strategy and creative, completing the new leadership team in the wake of MD Chris Hides’ departure in September.

Cooke joins the agency board after six years at Golin, where he was most recently executive director of strategy and innovation, working with clients including Smirnoff, Diageo, Honda, Adobe, Oracle, Virgin Trains, Unilever, Mondelez and Garmin. He also served on the board, leading the agency’s culture and innovation programme.

In his new role, Cooke will be responsible for driving growth and leading M&C Saatchi Talk’s “proposition, process, and practice” for clients including Homebase, EE, Dixons Carphone, Johnson & Johnson, Pandora, Le Creuset and Pernod Ricard. Working with the M&C Saatchi Intelligence team, he will also manage the agency’s insight and measurement tools.

M&C Saatchi Talk’s previous global head of strategy, Chris Brown, moved to Amazon to lead social media, content and data in EMEA. Hides left the agency this autumn to join The Academy as managing director, and while his role is not being directly replaced, M&C Saatchi Talk has made two recent senior hires: head of consumer Lucy Swan and senior associate director Chloe Mitchell.

Cooke said: “Throughout my career I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some very smart folk and truly remarkable brands. Those who had the fire and passion to create work that was not just seen but shared and talked about. There is a real potency to M&C Saatchi Talk’s offering, and with the insights, collaboration and scale of their network there is the assured ability to create the conversations that drive meaningful change.”