Former U.K. team reunites with chief creative officer Ewan Paterson
Matt Collier and Wayne Robinson, formerly of CHI & Partners in London, have come aboard DDB Chicago as creative directors. The move reunites the creative team with Ewan Paterson, chief creative officer of DDB Chicago; the three had worked together at CHI & Partners.
At DDB Chicago, Collier and Robinson will be tasked with collaborating on ideas across the agency’s account roster. Over the years, they have done notable work for such clients as Shell, Nestle, 888.com, Toyota, Mazda, Kellogg’s, News International, Britvic, Tiger Beer, and Friends of the Earth. This year, Collier and Robinson were widely lauded for their Sunday Times “Rich List” print campaign which earned a coveted D&AD Yellow Pencil. Collier and Robinson have also been featured in D&AD each of the five years they worked at CHI & Partners, for five different clients.
Collier and Robinson join DDB Chicago on the heels of the agency winning Pepsi’s Sierra Mist account and following its recent win of several new Mars Chocolate and Wrigley brands, including Starburst®, Skittles®, Milky Way®, Combos® and Balisto® to be led out of Chicago.
The creative team is also the latest in a spate of new hires in the Chicago office as Paterson has reshaped the creative department over the past year. Among the talent that has recently joined the agency are Alex Braxton and Alistair Robertson as creative directors, Eric Johnson as executive producer of music and integration, Jonathan Sackett as chief digital officer and Azher Ahmed as director of digital operations.
Effie UK and Ipsos Report Concludes Marketing Industry Should Do Its Part To Heal Societal Divisions
Society has never been more divided, according to a new report Healing the Divide in which Effie UK and brand and advertising experts from Ipsos explored brands’ role in shaping society and healing societal divisions.
The report details how instability, inflation, and COVID recovery —the convergence of multiple interconnected crises around the world that coincide with and amplify each other, causing hard to resolve systemic challenges, have become the norm over the past few years. As a result, the use of division as a weapon is now a major theme in today’s culture and politics, and sadly 47% of the UK and 49% of the US agree with the statement that “Within my lifetime, society in my country will break down,” according to Ipsos Global Trends 2024.
While some brands have tried to respond to this, the report finds responsible marketing is now threatened by weaponized division. It points to the World Federation of Advertisers’ decision to shut down the Global Alliance for Responsible Media following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X, combined with DEI rollbacks, as significant setbacks.
The report says these setbacks underline the importance of marketing in solving collective problems, such as climate change, food security, and harmful online content. It also points to a need for marketers to take more interest in and more responsibility for healing divisions.
Research claims marketers are ideally placed to build and rebuild the antidote to division (trust, empathy, a sense of control, connection and collaboration). According to the Ipsos Veracity index of trusted professionals, society is becoming more trustworthy of advertising executives. Additionally, 57% of Britons agree that brands should communicate their... Read More