Tombras has hired Chad Hopenwasser as its first chief production officer. Hopenwasser spent the past five years as Anomaly’s chief production officer and also previously led production at TBWA\Chiat\Day and Crispin Porter Bogusky. Hopenwasser will be based in Tombras’ New York office, which opened in late 2019.

Along with Hopenwasser, two more people are joining the agency. Ray Edwards, most recently VP, data at BBDO Atlanta, joins as Tombras’ first senior VP, analytics for its recently opened Atlanta office. And Diana Patterson, most recently an integration director at Empower, joins as VP, media director for its Knoxville, Tennessee office.

While Hopenwasser will be based in New York he will travel to the agency’s production studio in Knoxville when necessary. 

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“One of the things I’m most excited about is all the capabilities Tombras has to offer because every client's different, I feel like Tombras had the right kind of setup that we could create an environment where we can really do bespoke production solutions,” Hopenwasser told Ad Age.

Among his first projects for the agency is an upcoming national campaign for Pernod Ricard’s TX Whiskey brand, along with work for clients such as Krusteaz, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Orangetheory.

Hopenwasser’s hire is also a reunion since he will be working with Jeff Benjamin, who previously worked as CPB’s chief creative officer during Hopenwasser’s tenure, and joined Tombras as CCO in 2019. 

The three hires announced Thursday continue a string of filling leadership roles at the growing agency. In 2020, 72andSunny and R/GA vet Denice Heyward joined as senior VP, director of business affairs, and Alice Mathews was promoted to CEO. Tombras had 150 employees in 2015 and now has more than 400 employees.

“Bringing on Chad is transformational for the agency,” says President Dooley Tombras. “Chad is going to level up our work across the board, from high-end video to breakthrough activations to TikTok and everything in-between. We also had to upgrade our media chops for winning bigger media assignments which is why we needed somebody like Diana to come on board and when your whole positioning is connecting data and creativity for business results, we've got to continue to double down on analytics. That’s why hiring Ray is so big in this analytics arms race.”

The agency is having its strongest year to date and is getting into its biggest pitches ever, says Tombras.

“I wish the pandemic didn’t happen, it hurt a lot of people and it even hurt our numbers in the short term,” Tombras says. “But I do believe the silver lining of the pandemic is that a lot of those macro trends played into our favor, and we have grown because of it. The pendulum put more focus towards full service and independent agencies and a greater focus on e-commerce, performance, media, and analytics capabilities.”

The agency's recent work includes Hotels.com's new campaign released in August that also promotes casino and resort chain Resorts World. The agency also launched campaigns for Pernod Ricard’s American Whiskey Portfolio and Big Lots, both of which Tombras won creative agency-of-record duties for this year. Tombras was also named creative and media AOR for Edible, media AOR for the American Cancer Society, and social media AOR for Mozilla.