The Adweek 50

50. Trei Brundrett
Company: Vox Media
Title: VP, Product and Technology
Age: 35
V.C. Funding: $23.5 million
Location: New York
Under Brundrett’s direction, Vox Media has evolved into one of the most agile Web-based publishers. Building a proprietary content management platform, his technology powers the journalists of The Verge, Polygon and over 300 SB Nation fan-created media properties. Focused on functional and design-rich technology, Brundrett and Vox have pushed past conventional Web design with efforts such as StoryStream, which populates a writer’s updates in real time to provide an organized and intuitive history of complex breaking news. —C.W.

49. Jeff Lanctot
Company: Razorfish
Title: Global CMO
Age: 40
Revenue: $500 million
Location: Seattle
A year ago, Lanctot grabbed headlines by returning to Publicis’ Razorfish as chief media officer following a 16-month stint at Microsoft. Since his return to the agency, he has focused on Razorfish’s performance marketing strategies and multiplatform effectiveness via display, search and social. Lanctot, who also helped develop social ad units with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare for clients like Coors, Levi’s and McDonald’s, is key to positioning the agency for the Big Data era. —C.H.

48. Britt Hayes
Company: JWT
Title: Director, Creative Management
Age: 42
Revenue: $350 million (U.S.)
Location: New York
No wonder JWT North America chief David Eastman calls Hayes his “secret weapon.” Hayes is as skilled at the recruitment of top talent as she is the day-to-day management of creative staff. Known for her matchmaking acumen, she is well connected in an industry where the assets ride down the elevator every night. This year, Hayes was instrumental in two key personnel moves, tapping Crispin’s Jeff Benjamin as North America CCO and Goodby’s Mike Geiger as the region’s chief integration officer. —N.O.

47. Paul Suchman
Company: BBDO New York
Title: EVP, Senior Director
Age: 44
Revenue: $250 million (N.Y.)
Location: New York
Suchman has almost single-handedly built BBDO’s b-to-b operation to where it now accounts for over 25 percent of the New York shop’s revenue. Among the accounts he manages are Motorola Solutions, Monster.com and The Economist. In his six years there, he’s become known for his scrappy, tenacious approach, bringing BBDO’s business-to-consumer storytelling to the b-to-b world. —N.O.

46. Peggy Walter
Company: Leo Burnett
Title: Director, Celebrity Services
Age: 52
Revenue: $450 million (U.S.)
Location: Chicago
Every time you see Dean Winters wreak havoc in one of Allstate’s “Mayhem” spots, Walter is there, behind the curtain. For the past 17 years, she has been Leo Burnett’s resident talent agent, negotiating and administering contracts between the Publicis shop’s clients and the A-list celebrities who appear as spokesmen, record voiceovers and license their music for brand promotions—not to mention lesser-known actors behind such iconic characters as Tony the Tiger and Ronald McDonald. An indispensable fixer and agency linchpin, Walter has worked on more than 100 deals this year alone, touching all facets of Leo Burnett’s business. —G.B

45. Gaston Legorburu
Company: SapientNitro
Title: Worldwide Chief Creative Officer
Age: 42
Revenue: $685.6 million
Location: Miami
Legorburu has led SapientNitro’s rise over the last six years, accented by a chatter-worthy Fiat TV spot with supermodel Adriana Lima during the Super Bowl. Legorburu hasn’t just led inspired creative—he’s brought cash to the till, nabbing major brands like Harley-Davidson, The Home Depot, LeBron James and Nascar. He’s also poached top creative talent, hiring Alan Schulman from Adobe and Andre Matarazzo from Possible Worldwide as well as luring digital creative veteran Gary Koepke, who had been at Modernista! for more than a decade.
—Chris Heine

44. Sam Olstein
Company: Ignition Factory East/OMD
Title: Director
Age: 28
Revenue: $444 million (OMD)
Location: New York
Olstein has something most in the media agency world don’t: a Hollywood Rolodex, plus a deep understanding of how celebrities and brands work together. An expat of talent agencies ICM and Paradigm, his skills have proven valuable at OMD’s innovations unit. He helped to team up Olympian Usain Bolt and Gatorade for the iPhone game Bolt. The app was a hit, cracking 1 million downloads on the same summer day the real-life Bolt won gold at the 4x100. —G.B.

43. Michael Lombardo
Company: HBO
Title: President, Programming
Age: 55
Revenue: $3 billion
Location: New York
Not so long ago, pay channel HBO’s fortunes were in doubt. Chris Albrecht, the man who brought the net The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, had departed, each of those long-running hits had run its course, and while every critic adored The Wire, it seemed they were the only ones watching. Lombardo became programming chief in 2007, and the friendly, understated exec ushered in Emmy magnets like Mildred Pierce and The Pacific as well as hit series True Blood and Game of Thrones. Future projects from Michael Chabon and Stephen King spell an even brighter future. While not advertising-supported, HBO adds billions to Time Warner’s bottom line. —S.T.

42. Dario Spina
Company: Comedy Central
Title: EVP, Integrated Marketing
Age: 43
Revenue: $14.9 billion (Viacom)
Location: New York
Spina is responsible for brokering inspired integrations like that which paired The Colbert Report and Kraft. Those who might question the marriage of comedy and brand marketing needn’t worry. When Colbert essentially performed a Wheat Thins brand memo as a comedy routine on his nightly show, Kraft suits weren’t nervous—in fact, they thought the bit killed. “Let’s face it,” said a spokesman, “our brand memo is a lot funnier when it’s read by Stephen Colbert.” Not untrue. —S.T.

41. Bud Caddell
Company: Deutsch
Title: SVP, Director of Invention
Age: 29
Media Spend: $1.4 billion
Location: Los Angeles
When Tesco’s Fresh & Easy grocer wanted to seize on the Pink Slime controversy, Caddell cooked up, in under two hours, the idea for its “Meat Swap” stunt, which let consumers trade ground beef they’d bought at other stores for the client’s own chuck. As a digital thinker with a grand mandate—and after only a year at the agency—Caddell’s title might raise some eyebrows. But given the shop’s forthcoming online experiment for Pop Secret popcorn, he seems positioned to actually help sell-through—and maybe even deliver—the sort of rapid-fire, iterative client work that agency geeks are always fantasizing about. —G.B.