TBWA\Chiat\Day in New York today filled its top strategic planning post from within, promoting Eliza Esquivel to director of planning.
Previously, Esquivel was one of three group planning directors, working on Mars brands, including Skittles and Starburst. She also contributed to new business pitches. In her new role, she fills a vacancy left by the January exit of Carla Serrano.
Serrano, whose title was chief strategy officer, left to become a partner at Naked Communications in New York. She held her TBWA\C\D position for about a year.
As planning chief, Esquivel, 40, will lead a department of about 15 and will become part of a management team that includes office president Jamie Gallo and chairman and chief creative officer Mark Figliulo. She reports to Gallo.
Besides Mars, the office’s clients include Pernod Ricard (Absolut, Kahlúa), Michelin, Vonage and Pinnacle Foods (Birds Eye, Van de Kamp’s, Mrs. Paul’s, Swanson, Hungry Man).
In a statement about Esquivel’s promotion, Gallo cited her “curiosity, intellectual ambition and desire to make great work.” He added that she “doesn’t just sit around contemplating the role of planning. She just does it.”
Esquivel has spent nearly two and a half years at the Omnicom Group agency. She joined as a planning director in October 2008 and rose to group pd last year. Before TBWA\C\D, she was a planning director at independent Wieden + Kennedy in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where she worked on Coca-Cola and Nike Women.
