David Madrid promotes Saulo Rocha to COO

David Madrid has promoted Saulo Rocha from executive creative director to chief creative officer. Rocha joined the agency when it was launched three years ago. 

Rocha has worked with clients including Burger King, Milka, Halls, Netflix, Coca-Cola, Dole, Twitter, Unilever Asia, Corona and Turkish Airlines. Before joining David Madrid, he worked for 12 years for MullenLowe in Brasilia, São Paulo, and Madrid. He was global creative director at Lola MullenLowe.

Anomaly dives deeper into Web3 with new hire

Anomaly New York named Chris Neff the agency’s inaugural global head of emerging experience and technology, where he will be tasked with working with Web3 and accelerating the agency's innovation offering. He joins Anomaly from his previous role of VP, creative technology and innovation, at cross-cultural creative agency The Community, where he co-led for creative on the metaverse property Samsung 83X.

Neff also sits on The Ad Council’s UX committee and has founded Web3 collective Pesky Union. At Anomaly, he will report to Global CEO Karina Wilsher and work closely with Founding Partner Jason Deland.

Anomaly also named Joanne Peters as general manager and Natasha Jakubowski was promoted to global partner.

Peters will step into the newly-created general manager role after working for Peloton as VP, global creative operations. She previously served as Anomaly’s New York’s head of project management and operations. Peters will report to Franke Rodriguez, partner and CEO of Anomaly New York and Toronto.

Jakubowski, a 15-year-veteran of the agency, will also retain her long-held position of chief innovation officer along with her promotion.

Digitas UK launches free CV anonymizer

Digitas UK has made public Anon CV, a free tool that aims to remove biases from the recruitment process. Automatically removing details from CVs that may trigger bias in the hiring process, the tool aims to bring more diverse talent into the creative industry. 

Since the launch of Anon CV, Publicis Groupe’s full-service digital agency said it saved more than 500 hours on recruitment this year. Anon CV anonymizes name, education, gender, ethnic background, age and career in a CV before reformatting it, and Digitas has made the tool open source, publishing the source code free on GitHub.

To promote the tool, Digitas built the website anonCV.org which features information about the tool and launched a LinkedIn campaign targeting recruiters and HR teams.

Cricket Wireless’s new campaign with WWE

Longtime WWE partner and AT&T subsidiary Cricket Wireless launched a new campaign starring WWE superstar The Miz ahead of the July 30 SummerSlam event. 

Aided by creative agency Argonaut, Cricket Wireless invited five young WWE fans to sit in the WWE ring. In the 1:53-long video ad, The Miz is introduced to the ring as the fans' “favorite” WWE Superstar, leading the fans to react with disappointment and snorts. The WWE star then tries to bribe the children into saying that he is their favorite wrestler—the bribery is finally met with joyful cheers when he says “Cricket Wireless and The Miz will give you WWE Wrestlemania Tickets!”

To prepare for this campaign, the wireless brand and the agency sought out young fans across Los Angeles, who were eventually awarded Wrestlemania tickets. Before the video ad was released, Cricket teased out a series of gifs on social, inviting fans to guess which WWE star will appear on screen.

Tombras hires chief purpose officer

Tombras has hired Lindsay Stein for its newly-created role of chief purpose officer. The newest member of Tombras’ C-Suite, Stein will work on further defining Tombras’ point of difference. Additionally, she will further build the agency’s partnership with the University of Tennessee Knoxville through the Tombras School of Advertising and Public Relations, a 2021-launched program missioned to improve Black, Indigenous and people of color participation in the advertising industry.

Stein comes from Havas New York, where she served as chief of social impact and PR. She previously spent almost a decade at publications across the ad industry, as editor at Campaign US, as an agency reporter at Ad Age from 2015 to 2018 and as senior reporter at PRWeek.

Just Briefly

Publicis Creative U.S. has tapped Gareth Goodall as chief strategy officer, based in New York and reporting to Andrew Swinand, CEO of Publicis Groupe Creative and CEO of The Leo Burnett Group. Mick McCabe formerly held the strategy role. Goodall will oversee strategy across all Publicis creative agencies including Leo Burnett, Saatchi and Saatchi and Fallon. Before taking on the role, he was a partner and chief strategy officer at Anomaly New York.

New York-based creative media consultancy Gale has named Ben James its first chief innovation officer. The industry veteran will develop a new innovation discipline, building processes, programs, activations, prototypes and campaigns for Gale’s clients. Before joining, James worked for creative shops including Crispin Porter + Bogusky, CAA, BBH LA, and WPP. An awardee at the One Show, Cannes Lions, Clios, and other events, he has most recently led creative for T Brand at The New York Times.

FCB has named Shannon McFarland as chief talent officer of Chicago. McFarland will partner with FCB Chicago’s leadership team, led by CEO Kelly Graves, to attract talent, foster an inclusive working environment, and build talent programs. An HR veteran with more than 20 years of experience at agencies, McFarland has worked for shops including Leo Burnett and Mindshare. She has also served as senior VP, head of human resources at rEvolution. At FCB, she will replace Bella Patel, who was promoted to global chief talent officer in February. 

AntiSocial has been awarded the social agency of record for Mush. The Vancouver, Canada-based social media agency will help develop MUSH’s digital channel and aid the women-founded, owned, and operated oats brand with its social strategy and content creation. 

Pahnke Chicago has appointed Kate Black as president and partner, a new role at the agency. She will lead the agency’s roster of client business and help with a new business push. Black joins the agency—founded in 2020—from MediaLink where she was VP of brand and creative transformation for the last four years. Before that, she helped build a content agency at The Onion.

Milwaukee-based Hanson Dodge is focusing on its employee's health and well-being with its new initiative, "The Great Unzooming.” Employees at Hanson Dodge will attend a Milwaukee Brewers game, a  rooftop party on its premises, and collaborate in the office as part of the initiative. Management is paying for all out-of-towners to attend in person.