Mother New York, which recently explored the sexting phenomenon in a campaign for Calvin Klein, has hired a new chief executive and laid off a group of employees including some members of its creative department.
You may recall that Mother’s co-founder and CEO Andrew Dietchman left the shop two weeks ago to launch a venture called “The New Stand.” The company describes its product as “a discovery platform for new products and new media,” or an app that “exist[s] to give people something to look forward to during their travel routine.” We have yet to download said app, but it sounds like a less spammy version of Pinterest and we hope it doesn’t require a wi-fi connection because the New York city subway system has terrible reception.
The agency’s new CEO, Peter Ravailhe, was most recently managing director/global brand leader at TBWA\Chiat\Day, where he “won and led” Gatorade, Netflix, Airbnb and Disney (according to the press release). Both the release and his LinkedIn page describe him as an “international brand and youth culture executive,” which we take to mean that he writes notes on his iPad while watching the Disney Channel.
Ravailhe is also a former rugby player who worked on the client side as a director of strategic planning at adidas and a “club manager” at Virgin in London before entering the agency game with TBWA. Mother founding partner Paul Malström calls him “the kind of guy you want on your team…Somehow we snatched him up, or maybe it was the other way around.”
The exec continues, “I think we have so much more to show the world, and I’m super psyched having Peter’s help leading us on that quest.”
Regarding the departures, we hear that “several creatives” were let go in a move that applied across departments. Another statement from Malström:
“Our business and our client’s needs are always changing, it’s what make this industry so exciting. But to react to these changes, we also have to evolve and adapt the shape of our offering. We are excited to welcome some new people who are going to help us to do this, but we are also sad that it means parting ways with some great people who we know will move on to great opportunities.”
This is the latest in a series of executive changes at the shop, which did not provide the names of those new/great people mentioned above.
In May, Mother announced that former Lowe chief Michael Wall, or the man who supposedly engineered the Mullen merger, had been hired as global CEO. The news was noteworthy primarily due to the amazing “headshot” of Wall holding a stuffed duck.
Ravailhe starts work on November 2nd.