Tor Myhren has been promoted to president of Grey New York. He remains the agency’s chief creative officer and becomes the first creative ever to lead the agency’s flagship office.
“This well-deserved promotion, coming as we close the best year in Grey New York’s history, recognizes the pivotal role Tor has played in our successful revitalization and opens a new chapter in our emergence as an industry leader,” said Jim Heekin III, chairman and CEO of Grey Group.
Over the past two years, Grey New York has won 33 out of 37 pitches, over $1 billion in new business billings, from such clients as the NFL, DirecTV, Red Lobster, T.J. Maxx, Bausch & Lomb, Sargento Foods, Mayflower/United Van Lines, Allianz, America’s Natural Gas Alliance and TruTV, along with major new assignments from GSK, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Procter & Gamble, Eli Lilly and Diageo.
Under Myhren’s leadership, Grey has turned out such notable work as the ETrade Baby, a lauded, buzz-generating Super Bowl campaign; Ellen DeGeneres for CoverGirl; DirecTV’s Russian oligarch; the NFL’s first integrated campaign which went on to score a Cannes Lion; and Canon’s “Beyond the Still,” an Internet sensation.
As president and CCO of Grey NY, Myhren will continue to drive the agency’s creative vision, be responsible for all creative development and be an integral member of the new business team. Additionally, he will oversee the office’s Operating Group, with Heekin, and work even more closely with clients.
Myhren joined the agency as CCO in 2007. Earlier, he served as executive creative director of Leo Burnett Detroit for three years overseeing the General Motors business, spearheading the famous Oprah car giveaway and The Apprentice episode that sold out a year’s supply of the Pontiac Solstice in 41 minutes. He has also served as a creative director at TBWAChiatDay and was a founding member of Wongdoody, both in Los Angeles.
A winner of nearly every major creative award in the industry, Myhren’s work in digital, branded entertainment and content and experiential branding has added a new dimension to Grey’s creativity.
His first feature-length film, City Lax: An Urban Lacrosse Story (SHOOTonline, 6/21) aired on ESPN this year and won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the Sonoma International Film Festival.
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More