Today brings a couple of top-level shifts at McCann XBC (that’s EXTRABOLD CONDENSED) unit: a new president and a new chairman.
Joyce King Thomas will be chairman and Devika Bulchandani will succeed her, effective immediately.
You may recall that Thomas, who spent 16 years at McCann and served as its CCO until 2010, returned to the agency at the end of 2012 to run the new all-things-MasterCard unit after stepping down and leaving to spend two years working as a freelance consultant and experimenting with long-form journalism at (the excellent) Longreads.
Bulchandani’s promotion is leading the headlines: as President, she will work with all McCann Worldgroup/Interpublic shops in XBC (MRM//McCann, R/GA, Octagon) in order to “ensure that the global Priceless platform works in new and ever more relevant ways”, or promote MasterCard around the world.
She’s been with McCann for more than 17 years, most recently rising to the level of Chief Strategy Officer in 2005.
Both Bulchandani and Thomas will work with MasterCard CMO Raja Rajamannar, who writes:
“I am confident under [Bulchandani’s] leadership and Joyce’s creative direction that the MasterCard and McCann XBC partnership will be even stronger and the work even more contemporary and culturally relevant.”