Campbell Ewald Expands Executive Creative Leadership Team

Campbell Ewald is turning to a coffee farmer, a busy dad and a former pediatric phlebotomist who was also a dancer at Prince’s nightclub to build out its executive creative team. The agency is also promoting a longtime agency veteran to a new position. Campbell Ewald hired executive creative directors David Mackereth, Alejandro Ortiz and Nathalia Resende and promoted agency veteran Laura Rogers to the newly created role of executive director, branded content. The appointments reflect Campbell Ewald’s new creative leaders beginning to leave their mark on the Detroit-based agency. Silmo Bonomi and Clarence Bradley joined Campbell Ewald as co-CCOs last September, and the appointments include the creative leaders' first senior creative hires since their arrival. "When Silmo and I arrived, we were asked to elevate the creative work that was being done," Bradley told Adweek. "The first thing that we wanted to do was establish new leadership at the different offices that would help us execute that. Our criteria became to find people who could hit the ground running with a strong background in creative work, [work across formats] and fit the personality of Campbell Ewald. When Silmo and I were looking for people, we were thinking we would love to bring in leadership that could inspire the creative department and help us grow our comedic and design chops." Mackereth joins Campbell Ewald following a stint focusing on being a stay-at-home dad during the pandemic, often finding himself playing horse for his two young daughters, so that his wife could focus on her mental health private practice. He was previously a creative director at BBDO Minneapolis, where he worked with clients including 3M, Berkshire Hathaway, Hormel and The Science Museum of Minnesota. Ortiz took a circuitous route to becoming an agency creative, including such notable vocations as clipping elephant toenails at a zoo, serving as a pediatric phlebotomist and dancing at Prince’s night club, Glam Slam. He joins Campbell Ewald from McCann, where he was a vp, creative director, and he’s also a veteran of Deutsch, Leo Burnett and TBWA\Chiat\Day. During his career as a creative, he has worked with clients including Coca-Cola, UNICEF and the U.S. Army. Resende grew up on a small coffee farm in Tres Pontas, Brazil, of which she is still a co-owner. Better known as a Cannes-winning creative, Resende also joins Campbell Ewald from BBDO Minneapolis, where she recently partnered with Mackereth on a bacon-scented face mask for Hormel. In 2018, Resende was named to Adweek's Creative 100 while a creative director at Atlanta agency 22squared on the strength of a 2017 in-house International Women's Day campaign, which featured posters designed around a survey asking women in the office to share the one word they hate being called at work. In her elevated role, Rogers, who formerly served as an executive creative director, will be responsible for leading all branded content across the agency's client roster, while working closely with the agency's executive creative directors. The new executive director, branded content position reflects a commitment on the part of Campbell Ewald to building out the agency's branded content capabilities in both short- and long-form content, reinvesting in a capability that has long been part of the agency's offering. "Campbell Ewald has a legacy of creating branded content from even before it was called branded content. That's something we have in our DNA," Bradley said. "We are trying to grow the opportunity across the entire roster and new business as well." The new Campbell Ewald Coming up on the two-year anniversary of Campbell Ewald's rebranding, the Detroit-based agency's refreshed identity is taking shape under new creative leadership at a time when geographical boundaries have broken down with the proliferation of remote work. "Right now clients are looking for what would be the best fit. The cultural fit with Detroit is a big asset," Bonomi said. "Clients from different places in the U.S. are reaching out because they want that culture." "We still have the Detroit hustle. That will always be a part of Campbell Ewald's DNA, but now that we live in a world where we can work anywhere and collaborate at any time, that allows an agency like Campbell Ewald in Detroit to tap into talent wherever they might be," Bradley explained. Not limiting talent searches to locations around the agency's three offices in Detroit, New York and Los Angeles allows Campbell Ewald's leaders to shape diverse creative teams fitting the agency's values in the service of creating the type of dynamic and inclusive creative culture that it believes leads to the best work. "Having a Black person and a Latino person in this role is new for Campbell Ewald and it's still fairly rare for the industry. So us being able to sit in this role, we can answer a lot of questions people might have about diversity by being in this role and attract a lot of talent that wants to work in an agency that is culturally minded," Bradley said. "We're trying to make sure everyone has their voice. Being diverse allows us to tell more real, better stories that reflect the country we live in today," Bonomi added. "You’re gong to see the work changing and representing the new America."