He joins the Omnicom shop from BBH N.Y.

(Brian Morrissey) Tribal DDB has named Robert Rasmussen as its U.S. chief creative officer and executive creative director in New York.

Rasmussen, who joined Bartle Bogle Hegarty, New York, in November 2008 as ecd of innovation, replaces Steve Nesle, who has left Tribal after serving as its N.Y. ecd. The U.S. chief creative officer is a new position.

Rasmussen, an art director by training, joined BBH after 18 months as ecd at R/GA, where he worked on the Nike account.

His prior stops include JWT and Wieden + Kennedy, where he worked on the award-winning Beta7 project for Sega.

“I’m psyched to have him on board,” said Paul Gunning, CEO of Tribal, part of the Omnicom Group. “His credentials are impeccable. He has amazing Nike work and we were impressed with what he did for Sprite and the work he’s done for JetBlue was outstanding. He’s a great guy and super passionate for the digital space.”

The agency’s clients include Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Philips and Exxon.

Nesle, who resigned from Tribal today, said his departure is not a direct result of Rasmussen hire. “It’s nice to see the company putting in a creative director at a very senior level,” he said. “When we lost Matt Freeman, we lost that creative leadership at the C-suite level.”

“It was time for me [to go],” he added. “There are other things I want to do. I think Tribal will continue to kick ass.”

Rasmussen begins work at Tribal tomorrow.