This week, the New York offices of TBWA\Chiat\Day parted with its newest creative leader.
Wade Alger, who joined the Omnicom shop late last fall after 8 years with The Martin Agency, announced to fellow staffers in an internal memo that he would be resigning after 10 months. In explaining the decision, he cited the fact that his family still lives in Virginia and that the new job required him to commute from Richmond to New York City.
“It was with careful thought and consideration that I have issued my resignation,” he wrote. “At the end of the day however, I did it for my family. I have three wonderful children and an amazing wife I don’t want to miss a moment of it any more.”
Alger worked as a copywriter and creative lead at several shops before landing the Martin job in 2008, moving up the ranks and working on quite a few GEICO ads. Before moving to TBWA\Chiat\Day, he was best known for leading creative on “Unskippable,” one of the most-awarded campaigns of 2015.
“In the time Wade has been with us, he has had a direct impact on making the work more iconic,” added global chief creative officer Chris Garbutt. “Personally I will miss working with him but putting family first just tells you what type of person he is. We wish him the best of luck and can’t wait to see what he does.”
Like many other agency networks, TBWA has seen the new business pipeline dry up to some degree in recent months. The New York office did win new assignments in February when Nissan effectively ended its 30-year relationship with TBWA L.A., sending creative to Zimmerman and social/digital to TBWA New York.
According to the parties who alerted us to the change, Alger is the highest-level creative to leave the agency so far this year. We can confirm that several other members of that department have departed since the Nissan announcement, but it’s not clear at this time whether their moves simply amount to a standard case of agency revolving door.
A spokesperson has not elaborated beyond the statements above.