Leo Burnett Names Britt Nolan as Its New U.S. Chief Creative Officer

By Patrick Coffee 

More than nine months after the departure of Susan Credle for FCB, Leo Burnett has named her replacement: Britt Nolan will be chief creative officer of Leo Burnett USA, effective immediately.

U.S. CEO Rich Stoddart writes, “Throughout our extensive CCO search, Britt’s name kept coming up. He’s a business-minded creative who doubles down on integrated thinking and will create a new future for Leo Burnett.”

Nolan, who joined LB in the fall of 2009, has worked on some of the agency’s biggest accounts. For example, he is responsible for Allstate’s “Social Savvy Burglar” campaign from early 2015, serving as creative lead on that account as well as Kellogg’s, Firestone and The Art Institute of Chicago. Before being named to the CCO position, he was also promoted to lead creative on McDonald’s and Samsung.

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Another example of a recent headlining project on which Nolan drove creative was “Van Gogh’s Bedroom,” a collaboration between the Art Institute of Chicago and Airbnb.

Global CCO Mark Tutssel, who was named chairman of the Publicis Groupe’s communications unit in January, calls Nolan “a new breed – a modern, integrated thinker – and a prolific creative talent,” adding, “He’s a natural leader, a team builder and passionately believes in a ‘maker culture.’ I look forward to seeing the influence he’ll have in Chicago.”

From Nolan himself:

“One of my favorite things about Leo Burnett is that we just have so much firepower. It’s possible to make anything you can imagine here. When we’re nimble, open-minded, and collaborative, we’re the best in the world. I’m incredibly excited to help shape the future of Leo Burnett, to collaborate with some of the most talented and creative people in the business, and to make awesome things happen for our clients.”

Last month, Leo Burnett named Marcello Magalhaes (formerly with Sao Paulo’s Leo Burnett Tailor Made) as its new U.S. chief strategy officer. Moving forward, Nolan will partner with Magalhaes and Stoddart in “driv[ing] forward the agency’s creative and strategy departments.”

Before joining Leo Burnett, Nolan was a copywriter at Marc USA and spent several years within the DDB organization, moving up to the level of creative director for a few months before he was headhunted by the Publicis unit.

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