Toronto’s Fuse Marketing Group has appointed its first executive creative director, Steve Miller, as it continues to expand and enhance its integrated marketing capabilities.

Fuse managing director Adam Bleau said that Miller was chosen from among approximately one-dozen shortlisted candidates, capping a four-month hiring process. Several key factors contributed to the hire, said Bleau, including a strong cultural fit, a passion for brand-building, and his mentoring and coaching capabilities.

Miller was most recently senior vice-president, creative director at OneMethod, where he built the agency’s creative team and helped grow the agency’s staff from five to 55 people. Under Miller’s leadership, OneMethod also developed award-winning campaigns for clients including Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson and Nokia.

“Creative capabilities were table stakes for everyone we interviewed,” said Bleau, who said that Miller’s capabilities are also aligned with Fuse’s growth mandate. His hire comes amid a three-year growth period for Fuse, which continues to evolve beyond its roots as a promotional and experiential agency,  with an increased focus on creative and integrated marketing campaigns.

“We’re in the next trajectory of our growth as an organization, so we were looking for somebody who has taken an agency from point A to point B, overseen growth in client mandates [and] overseen a creative department,” said Bleau.

“People who know Fuse as an agency know it more of an experiential, promotional, below-the-line agency, but our offering has been elevated to where we are doing fully integrated campaign work, brand positioning and brand building,” he added.

Miller will work alongside The Township’s Karen Howe, who has spent the past 14 months as Fuse’s interim CD, as he transitions into the ECD role, said Bleau.

Disclosure: A Fuse Marketing Group executive is a financial supporter of The Message. Financial supporters have no influence or input on editorial decisions.