Amid Leadership Upheaval, DDB NY Is Merging With adam&eveNYC

One of the most storied New York ad agencies is making a big move and changing its name: DDB New York is merging with adam&eveNYC to form a new creative agency called adam&eveDDB. In addition, the agency will move its offices to a new space in the West Village in Manhattan and has hired Digitas president Caroline Winterton as its new CEO. Both Omnicom agencies will now operate as one out of the new office with a new leadership structure under Winterton. The merger follows at least 10 key departures among DDB's leadership team, with the most recent departures being DDB North America CEO Justin Thomas-Copeland, chief people officer Natalia Schultz, according to an internal email obtained by Adweek, and global DEI officer Nikki Lamba, which was announced last week during an all-hands meeting informing staff of the merger, according to two sources. Several executives were added to DDB North America in 2022, including Pradeep Kumar, chief data officer, and chief strategy officer Tomas Gonsorcik, who came from VMLY&R to replace Eric Zuncic, who left for Forsman & Bodenfors. The two New York offices have also lost several key accounts or are in jeopardy of losing them as Johnson & Johnson put the Neutrogena and Aveeno lines of business up for review in April. Jeremy Irons Celebrates Dyslexic Innovators in New Work by DDB Melbourne Winterton joins adam&eveDDB from Digitas New York, where she has served as president of the Atlanta and New York offices. While at Digitas, Winterton has been leading a team of 600 across clients including Crocs, Delta and Goldman Sachs. Winterton has led accounts and built teams for Procter & Gamble, Kraft and McDonald’s, winning numerous creative and effectiveness awards. She also previously served as the CEO of Barton F. Graf and as a partner at Grey, where she oversaw campaigns for Coca-Cola, Welch’s, Pringles, Febreze, Downy, Bose and Walgreens. As a full-service creative agency, the newly formed adam&eveDDB shop will offer brand and communications strategy, creative, integrated production, design, CX and experiential. The agency will also have an internal production company and fully staffed production team. Alex Lubar, global president and COO, and CCO Rick Brim are currently searching for a New York-based chief creative officer to partner with Winterton along with James Rowe, current adam&eveDDB managing director, who will report into Winterton and run the agency until her arrival in early fall. “Our ambition is to continue raising the bar on everything we do as one of the world’s most creative networks,” said Lubar in a statement. “There is true power in unity. With these two agencies coming together under the spark of Caroline’s leadership and Rick Brim’s creative oversight while we finalize plans to announce the hiring of a new CCO to partner with Caroline, our capabilities and creative offering will be world class, igniting our business, inspiring our people and super-charging our clients’ growth.” The agency decided to go with the adam&eve name rather than keep it just a DDB office because of the momentum they believe the agency has built in London under that moniker. “This is a completely new entity, and we want to treat it like a new entity. There's going to be new creative leadership—it's a marrying of two different very different cultures. And we've seen it here in London, and it's worked brilliantly,” Brim told Adweek, adding that the agency will have the energy and agility of a startup with the power and resources of a global network. Winterton looks forward to the new challenge of being a CEO at the newly merged agency. When she met with Lubar and Brim and heard about their plan to unite the two agencies, which has been successful in London, she jumped at the chance to be a part of the new entity. “[It’s] really celebrating the heritage of both of the brands, but creating a boutique creative agency at scale," Winterton told Adweek. "For me, coming from primarily a creatively led background, I love the opportunity to work on a new entity that has such great heritage and see what we can do in the North American marketplace with those two together." Growing pains after some losses Brim admits the move won't be without a few bumps in the road, but stated that the company isn’t considering layoffs at this time, especially since the merger allows the agency to scale up its output. “Layoffs are the furthest from our mind at the moment, because we've got so much work to do,” said Brim, adding that the merged agency will have a crew of roughly 170 people. But he did say that some people who don’t want to be a part of the merger may opt out. Winterton is optimistic about the merger, with the strength of the portfolio of clients across the two agencies allowing people to work on different things so they can flex their creative muscles. “Hopefully, people will really like the kind of change in the energy and the opportunities that just come together when we are bringing these two amazing entities together,” said Winterton. While the team is upbeat about the new direction of the agency, DDB has lost several key executives since 2022. Aside from the departures of Thomas-Copeland, Schultz and Lamba, CFO Valerie Bengoa retired several months ago. Additionally, DDB New York president Darla Price left for Ogilvy in March; DDB Chicago CEO Andrea Diquez left last year to join Gut; chief strategy officer Auro Trini Castelli departed for Product in November; and CCO Britt Nolan left for Leo Burnett. The agency also lost Jatinder Singh, chief data officer, who went to Accenture Song. On the adam&eve side, Mat Goff, who served as the CEO in London and then became CEO of the New York office to get it off the ground, left several months ago. Aside from people, the agencies have also lost several key accounts since the beginning of 2022, including DDB New York's Henkel and Aflac business, while adam&eveNYC lost Peloton and Jim Beam. But DDB NY recently won Kroger Health two years after winning the Kroger business, and Brim said there should be some new wins to announce in the near future. Brim is confident that clients will welcome the merger, since they will have more talent at their disposal, but he admits there is a lot of hard work ahead. “This is Bill (Bernbach)’s agency. And we've got to live up to that,” stated Brim, adding that he sees the new adam&eveDDB as inhabiting the middle ground between boutique agencies and big shops. Kroger Health Selects DDB New York as Its Agency of Record Brim also hopes to take the momentum of recent wins, including advertising agency of the year by adam&eveDDB and network of the year for DDB Worldwide for the third year in a row at the D&AD Awards, and parlay that into more work and goodwill for the new adam&eveDDB. Adam&eveDDB has won numerous awards for “The Last Photo” work for Calm, along with the agency's John Lewis work, Marmite and the Coors Light Chillboards campaign that found adam&eveDDB partnering with DDB Chicago and Nord DDB. "I want people to walk in proud of where they work," Brim said. "It's not going to be easy, but we're going to make it fun. If you if you see a piece of work that's absolutely exceptional, nine times out of 10 people had a lot of fun making it. It's easier said than done. But that's most definitely the mission." Jameson Fleming contributed reporting to this story.