TBWAChiatDay Los Angeles has elevated Erin Riley to CEO and Jen Costello to chief strategy officer.
The promotions follow a year of reckoning and transformation for the creative industry, during which TBWAChiatDay LA met the challenges and saw exceptional growth in new business, with recent wins such as Discover, Moderna, Behr Paint, AT&T TV and Schwan’s Company, including its Red Baron and Freschetta pizza brands.
“Erin is an extraordinary leader who has helped our clients and the agency navigate challenging times and come out the other end smarter and stronger,” said Troy Ruhanen, CEO of TBWAWorldwide. “She’s a brilliant business mind who leads with humanity, and I have absolute confidence she will continue to lead Chiat LA into an exceptionally strong next chapter.”
Riley and Costello have been accelerating a change agenda since 2020, alongside Chiat’s leadership team, turning TBWA’s methodology of Disruption on themselves to rebuild the agency’s foundation for a modern and inclusive era of creativity.
Both will tell you there’s much more to do. Over the last 12 months, TBWAChiatDay LA has invested in new and evolved practice areas including its design division, which created the United Nation’s COVID design system, a purpose-driven consultancy, which helped clients navigate the pandemic using Purpose as a north star, a Multicultural Practice upending the idea of a “general market” synonymous with whiteness that’s helped brands navigate their role with its two Racial Injustice Response Guides, and a B2B division specializing in highly complex businesses.
As a driver for recent wins and client growth, strategy was another major investment area. Under Costello’s leadership, and in partnership with TBWAWorldwide global chief strategy officer Agathe Guerrier, the group focused on using commercial understanding to amplify their hallmark disruptive creativity and iconic experiences. Over the last year, the agency doubled its data and analytics group, brought in social platform experts, installed its first business intelligence lead, and appointed its first head of connections to lead the agency’s Media Arts practice.
Riley and Costello have also been at the forefront of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at ChiatDay LA. Through training, established affinity groups and inclusive hiring practices like “Disrupting Recruiting” to eliminate unconscious bias in the process, the agency has dramatically increased diversity across all levels and departments, with 64% of new hires in 2021 from diverse backgrounds. Their dedication and impact on the agency’s culture has created an environment where all employees can thrive through programs that cultivate talent and give back to the community. Earlier this year, TBWAChiatDay LA partnered with Compton Girls Club and its client QuickBooks to create an incubator series that helped 11 young diverse women become entrepreneurs.
“Jen is an exceptionally dimensional strategist who is architecting our offering across data analytics, cultural insight, and behavioral intelligence,” said Riley. “She is an innovator, storyteller, and fortuneteller all in one. Her intellect is only matched by her humanity which is why she is exactly the right leader for this moment. I feel privileged to have her as my partner.”
Riley joined TBWAChiatDay LA as president in 2016 from Gap Inc. She’s worked both client and agency side with leadership stints at BBH, Old Navy and Cole Haan.
Since joining in 2013 from The Martin Agency, Costello has risen the ranks at ChiatDay and been a driving force in creating iconic platforms and Disruptive creative for brands including Airbnb, Uniqlo, Google Play, Blue Diamond and Peak Games. She’s helped modernize core strategic disciplines and implemented programs that impact culture and scale talent. One example is the introduction of a program that makes a certified mini-MBA available to all agency talent.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More