TBWA’s Los Angeles office made two hires today, and we have the press release to prove it.
For the newly-created chief production officer role, the agency hired Tanya LeSieur; she will join TBWA in late March and sit at its (metaphorical) management table along with President Luis DeAnda, Chief Creative Officer Stephen Butler, and Chief Strategy Officer Nick Barham. Perhaps most significantly, she will also “assume oversight of all agency creative output.”
LeSieur heads West from Saatchi & Saatchi New York, where she landed around the same time as (relatively) new CEO Brent Smart. Prior to that move, LeSieur served as director of integrated production at Saatchi’s LA office for four and a half years, and she is a familiar face to creative staffers at a few major agencies: she spent five years with JWT, one with McCann, and nearly a decade with GS&P before joining Saatchi in 2009. During her time in New York, she also served as a juror/panelist/thought leader for pretty much every major awards event.
A source claims that new business had been a point of contention in recent months at Saatchi’s New York office, which went through a standard creative “reshuffling” last summer.
TBWA also hired UX veteran Mark Sloan as director of design in LA. Sloan most recently held the creative director position at surf company Quiksilver, but he is not a new face within the TBWA organization: prior to joining Anomaly Amsterdam as ECD in the summer of 2012, he spent more than a year as an art director/ACD at MAL working on the iPhone 4S. He also worked on the design team at Wieden+Kennedy’s Amsterdam office.
The two will work on all of TBWA LA’s accounts, which now include such recent wins as Airbnb, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Miller Lite. Butler writes:
“Tanya and Mark are both rightfully renowned for their creative weaponry and their high regard for craft, and having them on board will give us the competitive edge that we are seeking.”
Both new hires will report to him.