BBDO San Francisco Wins Hot Wheels and Fisher Price, Promotes Barbie Lead Matt Miller to CCO

By Erik Oster 

BBDO San Francisco promoted Matt Miller to the role of chief creative officer, the first to hold that title at the agency in over 15 years.

Miller joined BBDO as an executive creative director leading the Wells Fargo account in the summer of 2014. He led the agency’s reinvention of Mattel’s Barbie brand, beginning with “Imagine the Possibilities” in October of 2015 and continuing with “The Evolution of Barbie” promoting a new, more diverse line of the doll last year. Two creative directors who worked on the Barbie account, Amber Justis and Kevin Thomson left the agency shortly after that effort. Since the launch of the Barbie reinvention, BBDO has picked up work on  Mattel’s other two main brands, Hot Wheels and Fisher Price.

Since Miller’s arrival at the agency, it has more than doubled in size, BBDO San Francisco president and CEO Jim Lesser told Adweek. “We’ve been on a great new business run, and this marks how much he has impacted that.”

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“I have two main goals,” Miller added. “One is to create the most poachable people in the industry, those with the biggest thinking, the deepest books, the best presentation and client-management skills—the leaders. Then I want to create an environment that’s so supportive and nurturing that those people never want to leave.”

Before joining BBDO, Miller spent over six years Leo Burnett Chicago, where he rose from a copywriter to vice president, creative director before leaving the agency. With Leo Burnett, he worked on campaigns including “Mayhem” for All State and “Mean Stinks” for Secret. Prior to joining Leo Burnett he spent a little over a year as a copywriter with Calgary agency Rare Method.

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