Deutsch LA has hired Kelsey Karson as SVP, group strategy director, to lead all strategy efforts for Taco Bell. Karson joins Deutsch from R/GA, where she was the architect behind many of the agency’s most disruptive and culture-impacting campaigns. She will report directly to Kelsey Hodgkin, Deutsch LA’s EVP, head of strategy.
Karson will be tasked with continuing to develop innovative strategies that connect Taco Bell with its fans. With the recent expansion of the agency’s scope to include social efforts, Karson will oversee all brand efforts, including upcoming campaigns for Taco Bell’s loyalty program, new product launches and platform work.
Karson is a Texan who made her way to Los Angeles to work on the Beats by Dre brand at HUSTLE, R/GA’s conflict shop. There she created campaigns that reacted to culture in real time, including LeBron’s return to Cleveland, the NFL draft, and leading the strategy for the infamous “Straight Outta Somewhere” campaign, which was the first campaign to trend simultaneously on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Karson then spent time at R/GA’s LA office, where she led strategy for brands such as Barbie, Amazon, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and Amazon, to name a few. Throughout her career, she has collected top industry accolades including numerous Cannes Lions, CLIO, D&AD, Webby, Shorty, and Jay Chiat awards.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More