NEW YORK Tribal DDB has altered its management structure, naming regional leaders on the East and West Coasts.
The Omnicom Group-owned agency has put Paul Gunning, general manager of its Chicago office, in charge of Tribal DDB East, which comprises Atlanta, Chicago and New York. Elizabeth Ross, general manager of Tribal DDB in San Francisco, adds responsibilities for Dallas and Los Angeles as head of Tribal DDB West.
Both Gunning and Ross report to Tribal DDB CEO Matt Freeman. The agency plans to name new general managers for San Francisco and Chicago.
The changes come at a challenging time for Tribal. The agency was forced to drop out of the Wal-Mart review due to a potential conflict with work done for J.C. Penney. Key client McDonald's recently named independent AKQA its lead global digital agency; Tribal continues to work for the fast-food giant in the U.S. and other markets.
As the leader of Chicago operations, Gunning was in charge of Tribal's largest office, which handles McDonald's. Prior to joining the agency in 2000, he worked at Siren Technologies, an in-store digital marketing company.
Ross joined Tribal in 2004 after a brief stint at Grey in San Francisco and more than five years at Modem Media, now owned by Digitas. She has also worked at JWT.
"It's an issue of managing growth," said Tribal DDB CEO Matt Freeman. "We've grown so much that the requirements of management have exceeded my ability to manage them alone. It's an extension of the regional management model that we've put in place in Europe and Asia."
Freeman added that Tribal would likely add outposts in both regions in 2007.