The former head of strategy at Universal McCann has taken a top role at Heat in San Francisco.
Mike Barrett joins his new agency as managing director of communications strategy and media.
At UM, a unit of Interpublic Group, Barrett led strategy for North America. He had worked at the agency since November 2008.
Earlier in his career, Barrett was a planning director at Publicis & Hal Riney an account executive at Leo Burnett.
In his new job, Barrett becomes part of senior management at Heat, reporting to executive creative director Steve Stone and president John Elder.
Heat was founded in December 2004 by Stone, who previously was a principal at Black Rocket, the first agency for Yahoo. (Black Rocket was sold to Havas in February 2001 and no longer exists.) Heat's accounts include EA Sports, Bank of the West, Sunrun, Riverbed Technologies, MINI of San Francisco and the AOL Consumer Applications Group.
Reflecting on the addition of Barrett, Stone said: "I'm really looking forward to adding more science to show clients why surprising creative is effective creative."