Havas New York names co-CEOs

Havas is hiring one executive and promoting another to serve as co-CEOs of Havas New York, its largest U.S. agency. Sarah Collinson, most recently managing director of independent agency Joan Creative, becomes co-CEO of Havas New York alongside Havas New York Chief Creative Officer Dan Lucey. Lucey previously worked alongside Collinson at Joan. Lucey will lead creative for the New York team while Collinson will handle the business side of the agency including operations and account management. Havas New York’s last CEO was Laura Maness, who was named Grey’s global CEO in July. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs The appointment of Collinson and Lucey as co-CEOs was made to make sure the creative department wasn’t siloed from the rest of the business. “If you're going to put creativity and the work at the center, then to have a creative leader partnering with the business lead makes a lot of sense,” Lucey said. “If you look at the best agencies—whether it's Uncommon or whatever else you want to point to—the creative leader is not just sitting in a silo in the creative department, they are making decisions.” Havas New York currently has 218 employees. Its clients include New York Presbyterian, JBL Harman Kardon, Reckitt and Danone. Collinson was the first account person hired at Joan six years ago and helped the agency grow to over 100 employees. She has served as managing director role at Joan since 2019. Lucey, who became the chief creative officer of Havas New York in 2020, previously worked as a lead creative with Collinson, where they won and worked on accounts such as Facebook, Brawny and General Mills. “I still love Joan. It was a really difficult decision, but sometimes these things come along, and you're like, 'God, there is such potential there,'” Collinson said. “I think [Havas] buying Uncommon as well this summer is just another feather in their cap, showing this push for creativity … really is the drive of the whole company.” The decision to have two CEOs was influenced by the fact that Lucey and Collinson had worked together at Joan in the past and have complementary skills, said Donna Murphy, the Global CEO of Havas Creative Network and Havas Health & You. Along with the move, Tim Maleeny, most recently chief strategy officer of Havas North America and president of Havas New York, will now serve in an expanded role as chief strategy and innovation officer of the North America region. The agency is also adding Joao Medeiros, previously the executive creative director for Havas Middle East, to Havas New York as an executive creative director. Medeiros led the Adidas Liquid Billboard campaign that won the 2022 Outdoor Cannes Lion Grand Prix. Lucey said the New York team is looking to add more talent and invest in other offerings within the agency, including AI. Havas New York is currently using AI for 75% of its “comps,” which are typically drafts of designs or work before the final creative is made, according to Lucey. AI marketing blog How brands are using ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and other tools Read more here “Instead of spending all night hunting for photos that kind of match, you could just set some prompts and deliver on a look throughout a campaign,” Lucey said. “If you want to write a song and you want to share it with the client, instead of having that really awkward moment where the creative or somebody has to sing the song to the client in the room, you can have AI recorded in the voice of Drake and you could press play on that thing in the room.” Lucey also said the agency will look to raise awareness of its creativity. The goal is to create more visible work such as the agency’s “Most Interesting Man in the World” campaigns for Dos Equis that stopped running in 2017. “I think we’re starting to now rebuild some of that culture and put out work that is memorable,” Lucey said. “So I think the opportunity is one, to tell our story and two, to continue to put out work that becomes visible and liked and awarded and well-received by the public and just make a little bit more noise as an agency.”

Havas New York names co-CEOs

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