TBWA\Chiat\Day has appointed its first-ever U.S. CEO. 

Erin Riley, who has been with the agency for nearly eight years, is taking on the role after serving as the CEO of TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles since 2021. Prior to that she served as president of the LA office.

Riley, who will remain in Los Angeles, will now oversee TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles, New York and Nashville. (Structurally, TBWA’s Nashville team is part of TBWA\Chiat\Day New York.) In total, she will lead nearly 2,000 employees with New York and LA, respectively, having the largest offices.

“These are very robust agencies that share a lot in terms of ethos and methodology, but also have things that are very distinct about them, things that we want to preserve,” Riley said. “It’s really about looking for those products and offerings that could be better together.”

Internal connections

It’s rare for TBWA to have one leader in the U.S. While Riley’s U.S. CEO title is brand new, her appointment marks the third time that TBWA has had one leader overseeing the U.S. in some capacity. Bob Kuperman was TBWA\Chiat\Day president and CEO of the Americas for four years until 2002 and Robert LePlae was president and CEO of TBWA North America for four years until 2009, according to an agency spokesman.

The network is looking to “proactively” create more “talent fluidity” across the offices while maintaining the agency brands, according to Riley.

This will allow employees to work across each office’s clients as well. Its New York office, which also works on some clients with the Nashville team, handles clients such as Nissan, Hilton, LG, and Henkel. TBWA’s LA office handles clients such as Jack in the Box, Discover, DirecTV, and Gatorade.

Examples of offerings that Riley will look to integrate across the U.S. network include its Design by Disruption capability, which was launched out of TBWA’s LA office in June, and its Plex offering ,which focuses on B2B and other “complex” clients in health, tech and more.

TBWA is also looking to grow its innovation practice by integrating Dotdotdash, the innovation agency it acquired last year, further into its teams. Social and content creation has also become a bigger ask among clients, according to Riley.

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“Clients were so often looking for small social agencies, and now I think they realize that's tough because it needs to be connected to the brand and everything is so integrated,” Riley said. “More and more of our clients are asking us to take that on, and that will continue to be a place where we invest in talent and capabilities to be able to deliver best in class, which to be honest, is probably not something people think of immediately when they think of Chiat and we want them to.”

Integration vs. consolidation

The new structure is also meant to help remove some redundancies across the U.S. “We’ll be able to come together, have a little more efficiency, and then redirect those energies in other places that they could be used, which will certainly be a benefit to our clients and also internally as well. We can invest in new skill sets because we’re not investing in redundant ones,” Riley said.

Riley said the agency is still deciding whether to have CEO or president roles in LA and New York. In September, TBWA\Chiat\Day New York’s CEO Nancy Reyes departed to join BBDO as its Americas CEO.

“We don't have to make that decision urgently because we’ve got really strong teams and talent,” Riley said. “So I want to be thoughtful about that, but my intent is to make sure that each office has quite strong leaders in place.”

Both TBWA\Chiat\Day New York and Los Angeles have their own P&Ls according to Riley, who said that isn’t changing for the time being.

While integration across agencies is a goal for Riley, she said this isn’t the same as a consolidation since agencies will be keeping their brands. 

“In some cases, legacy brands are getting dissolved and it does hurt your heart a little bit when you see agency brands that we all grew up with kind of disappearing,” Riley said. “Chiat is such a powerful brand in the market, and I actually think New York and LA coming together will help it be more potent. That is my vision, which is this agency is a great agency, and I think actually separating our stories sometimes didn’t allow the market to feel like the full weight of that.”

Consolidations have been increasingly common over the past couple of years. The one that got the most attention this year was the announcement of Wunderman Thompson and VMLY&R merging to form VML. Earlier this year, DDB New York merged with Adam&EveNYC, and Juniper Park\TBWA, DDB Canada and Bolt Productions merged to form TBWA\Group Canada. Last year Dentsu Creative was formed as a result of a consolidation.