Condé Re-Brands

Condé Nast is bringing in a career advertising executive to lead an expanded and re-branded creative agency arm.

John Deschner is now managing director of Condé's CNX group, the area that will now oversee all advertising and branding work for outside clients. As part of an effort to re-brand the company's agency-type work, which has become a substantial revenue source for Condé, its 23 Stories “creative studio” segment is being folded into CNX, which will continue to handle all sorts of typical agency work, like creative campaigns and event production and casting, along with branded and “white label” content, but on an expanded scale.

Anna Wintour, Condé's artistic director and longtime editor in chief of Vogue, said the creative agency “has flourished since it was created just a few short years ago” and that expanding it “was a natural next step.”

As for Deschner — who is replacing Josh Stinchcomb, who spent most of his career in magazine publishing and left Condé over the summer after a decade in various roles to become chief revenue officer at Dow Jones — he's spent nearly all of his career working in advertising. He was most recently chief innovation officer and managing director at TBWA/Chiat/Day, the U.S. arm of TBWA Worldwide, and international agency owned by Omnicom Group.

While one could think that moving from a major agency to a media publisher that is going through its share of change as consumer culture shifts in the face of ever-deepening digital capabilities and expectations wouldn't be appealing,

Deschner sees Condé's agency as essentially the future of