Lowe Campbell Ewald announced the hiring of Jim Houck as the newest ECD in its San Antonio office, where he will run all creative for the USAA account.
Houck is a writer and agency veteran whose name has appeared on the creative credits for such classic mid-00s campaigns as Crispin, Porter + Bogusky’s “Wonderful World of King” for BK. According to his own (amusing) resume, Lowe’s newest director was hired to served as copywriter/”horsepower” at CP+B ” a total of four times between 1991 to 2008″ before moving to SapientNitro — where he held the global director of entertainment title — in 2008. (He also managed to work as Senior Writer at Saatchi & Saatchi LA for two years between various stints at CP+B.)
In fact, he was there back when Mr. Bogusky was an up-and-coming art director rather than the face of a cultural revolution.
Houck spent approximately two years with Sapient before an extended stint as a freelancer. From 2010 to 2015, he worked with everyone from FCB (Taco Bell) and TBWA (Pepsi) to Deutsch LA (Sony, HTC), 22squared, and “Direct Action Resource Center,” which apparently provides “black operations combat training” to Army Special Forces(!).
Houck, who graduated from from Kansas State University with a BS in journalism but wisely decided not to enter that field, has written several novels and screenplays including “Ketchup Soup” and The Writer, a film set to be released later this year.
For the new position, he relocated to San Antonio, where he reports to CCO Mark Simon.
His would appear to be the first big hire for Lowe Campbell Ewald since a round of January layoffs followed its loss of the Cadillac account to Publicis Worldwide.