Fast Chat: Joyce King Thomas on Her Return to McCann Worldgroup

Adweek: What have you been doing since leaving McCann?

King Thomas: I wanted to try different things. I had been all output and no input for so long. One of the first things I did was I joined Longreads and worked with Mark Armstrong (founder of the site, which collects and curates long-form journalism for online reading). We convinced Virgin Atlantic to be their first brand partner and now we’ve moved to subscription service and that’s been great because I got to see firsthand how you build and sustain a social community. The other thing I did was I joined the Leadership Collective founded by Rick Boyko (former Ogilvy & Mather North American CCO and director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Adcenter), which is about helping companies get more creative. I also joined the board of a nonprofit called Nurse Family Partnership, which helps disadvantaged women learn how to become moms. What’s interesting is that they have these fantastic results and I learned that’s the big thing in the nonprofit world. You need to have quantifiable results.

Have you been creating any advertising since leaving McCann?

I’ve worked with some clients. My latest one is an Italian jewelry company, Dodo, a division of Pomellato, which is a retailer who wanted to resonate more in the U.S. I’ve been doing everything for them. I’ve written their new e-commerce site, which isn’t done yet, and even helped them come up with ideas for store windows. It was so much fun and reminded me of what I love to do: figuring out what a brand is and making sure that comes through in every little thing, including the store windows.

What’s it like to be going back to McCann Worldgroup?

It feels good. I have a ton of friends there and I’ve received an amazing welcome back. It’s a really different job from the one I had, which I didn’t want to do again. I’ll be focusing on every little thing about the MasterCard work and the business and be completely up to speed on business activity and all their communications around the world. We’ll be troubleshooting if there’s an issue or finding some great opportunity. If that’s in Dubai we’ll bring that idea to New York.

Is this a more expanded global role for you on MasterCard than what you previously did as CCO at McCann New York?

I’ve always worked on the account globally and know a lot of MasterCard people around the world. That’s how I know (MasterCard CMO) Alfredo Gangotena. I knew him when he was in Italy. But this is even more immersive and covers everything across media teams, digital, events. This will be a new level of involvement. Before I saw scripts and ideas from around the world, but at that point it may have been more about managing the process around the world and this is now more about maximizing the process around the world.

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