FCB has named Karin Onsager-Birch as chief creative officer of the agency’s San Francisco and Los Angeles offices, collectively known as FCB West.
She fills a role left vacant since the departure of Eric Springer last September, and her appointment follows the selection of Eric Cosper as chief creative officer of FCB Garfinkel in New York a little over a week ago.
Onsager-Birch joins FCB from Blue Hive in London, where she worked on the WPP agency’s Ford account. She arrived at Blue Hive in May of 2012, serving initially as executive creative director before being named chief creative officer last year. Prior to that, she spent 11 years with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, arriving in 2001 as a creative director and senior art director, before becoming an associate creative director in 2004. While with GS&P, Onsager-Birch worked on accounts including Chevrolet, Hyundai, Nintendo and Hewlett Packard.
When asked of the appointment, FCB West CEO Dominic Whittles told AdAge that Onsanger-Birch was chosen because her “leadership style is substantive and direct, she’s open minded and solution-oriented, she’s clear about her point of view and very forthright,” adding that her international experience “allows her to draw on a much larger source code of information.”