Ari Weiss, former global chief creative officer at Omnicom Group agency DDB, has official launched his next endeavor: an independent advertising agency called Quality Experience (QX). Weiss will serve as founder and creative chairman, with new partners Colleen Leddy, Cristina Reina, and Dan Gonda joining as chief strategy officer, chief creative officer, and CEO, respectively. Quality Experience is built on the core belief that “Experience is everything and everything is an experience.”
“We’re not talking just experiential marketing; at Quality Experience, we believe all aspects of advertising should be looked at as experiences. It raises the stakes in everything we do. It drives us to look at every interaction with a brand as an opportunity. This requires a simple idea that can flex and connect, adding value across thousands of touchpoints,” said Weiss.
In an age where consumers are bombarded with tens of thousands of messages per day, Quality Experience aims to separate itself from the landfill of content by creating experiences that people seek out. Every experience should be rewarding for the people who consume it and the people who make it. At Quality Experience, those brand experiences will be produced with a combination of unprecedented C-level talent, strategic and emotional design, and cultural awareness to deliver work that works.
To help guide ambitious brands on this journey, Weiss has assembled progressive creative thinkers such as:
- Leddy joins as partner and CSO, following more than a decade at Droga5, most recently serving as CSO. Her knack for integrated thinking has maximized the impact of campaigns for world-class brands such as Under Armour, The New York Times, JP Morgan Chase, Mailchimp, and Meta.
- Reina, formerly global executive creative director and head of art at McCann North America, will serve as partner and CCO, a role that embodies her passion for groundbreaking creativity. To date, she has been instrumental in creating innovative pieces for brands such as Microsoft, Smirnoff, and Verizon, to name a few.
- Gonda, who joins having spent more than 10 years at Droga5 where he most recently served as CEO, will oversee agency operations as partner and CEO. He brings with him more than 20 years of industry experience working with some of the biggest brands in the world across almost every category.
Commenting on this new venture, Leddy shared, “The advertising landscape has changed immensely over the past few years. Linear stories have less value than ever before. Consumers are bombarded with endless content that they’re quick to ignore, and most brands fight back with short-term PR spikes and culture grabs that don’t always build brand value over time. But, if you create a quality experience for consumers by treating every interaction as an opportunity, you earn their attention, affinity, and loyalty.”
“The most impactful impressions are the ones you don’t pay for,” added Reina. “Those impressions require breakthrough creative thinking that connects emotionally and provides value for an audience beyond informing them of what a product or service does. This is not about being loud and repetitive; it’s about showing up in–or, better yet, creating–culture. This is the very definition of modern creativity.”
“It’s rare that you get a group like this together,” said Gonda. “And it’s even more rare that talent usually reserved for the global C-suite will actually work on a client’s business every day. We’re excited to roll up our sleeves and build this agency for purpose in 2024 and beyond.”
