Burrell hires Hill Holliday veteran as new creative chief

Multicultural agency Burrell Communications has hired Hill Holliday veteran Khari Streeter as chief creative officer. The role opened up when Chief Creative Director Lewis Williams left the agency in December after 15 years to join Weber Shandwick. The position was held in the interim by Terrence Burrell (no relation to agency founder Tom Burrell), who had previously served as executive creative director on the multicultural agency’s Comcast account. He will now oversee the transition and carry on with his previous role. Streeter, who described his career path as “non-linear” in a statement, was executive VP creative director at agency Hill Holliday for nearly 10 years. In that role, he worked with financial institutions including Liberty Mutual and Bank of America, along with clients such as Planet Fitness, Reebok, Anheuser-Busch and Adidas. Streeter in a statement said that in his work he has tried to “convince clients that they need to have diverse work, diversity in their work, diverse audiences for their work as well as to try and lead the agencies that I've been a part of to increase their diversity in-house.” "In this time of heightened awareness and the prioritization of inclusion, the trend has seemed to be headed in the right direction, but it's still performative. With the opportunity that Burrell represents, we're starting at a point that Burrell has already created the momentum for,” Streeter said. Before joining Hill Holliday, Streeter founded and acted as creative director for The Heat, which was the agency of record for Reebok. Streeter has also directed two films that premiered at the Sundance Film festival and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1997. Burrell Communications, based in Chicago and created to connect brands with Black communities, describes itself as “transcultural” and seeking to appeal to millennials, boomers and GenXers. The shop has worked consistently with McDonald’s since the 1970s. Its recent work for the fast-food giant includes a campaign called “Black and Positively Golden” in 2020 that focused on education and community charity. Other clients include Comcast, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Toyota. Burrell’s revenue rose to $27.1 million in 2021, up from $26 million in 2020 and $24.4 million in 2019, according to the Ad Age Datacenter. The agency has been 49% owned by Publicis Groupe since 1999.

Burrell hires Hill Holliday veteran as new creative chief

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