From left to right: Wunderman Thompson's Tom Murphy, chief creative officer, North America; Ellie Bamford, chief strategy officer North America; and Audrey Melofchik, CEO of North America.
Wunderman Thompson has hired Ellie Bamford as chief strategy officer for its North America region.
Bamford previously spent four years with R/GA, where she was global head of media and connections. Bamford, who was named Ad Age's Creativity Awards Media Planner of the Year in 2022, will officially start her Wunderman Thompson role in April.
The post has been vacant since January of last year when Brandon Geary departed the WPP agency to take on a strategy position at Amazon.
Bamford said she felt “seen” when the agency approached her with the opportunity.
It “felt like such a brilliant and unique role for me,” Bamford said. “What we do needs to be very deeply connected to how [a brand] actually lives in the world and how it lives in the world for real people.”
During her time at R/GA, Bamford helped lead the media effort for Reddit's five-second regional Super Bowl ad in 2021 that was created within four business days of the Big Game. Bamford also worked on R/GA’s “Black Beauty is Beauty” campaign for Sephora that helped Black beauty products break through search results on Google and YouTube.
“She's very strategic and creative, but she thinks via individual people in front of a computer or individual people who are watching the Super Bowl," said Audrey Melofchik, North America CEO for Wunderman Thompson. “She thinks about the people through the context of what they're doing and how they are experiencing the brands so that the messages are much more laser focused.”
Bamford will report to Melofchik, as well as Neil Dawson, global chief strategy officer for Wunderman Thompson. A key focus for Bamford will be making sure there is more integration across teams when it comes to incorporating different agency capabilities.
Last year, Wunderman Thompson won the first-ever Creative B2B Grand Prix at Cannes after creating an AI tool for Sherwin-Williams that helped users create personalized color palettes. The shop also recently launched a Super Bowl ad for Hellmann’s that featured Jon Hamm, Brie Larson, and Pete Davidson.
“The biggest challenge that we have facing us right now is raising our profile and making sure that people understand just how strong we are not only from a data, tech, and commerce perspective, but also from a creative perspective,” Melofchik said. “I'm not looking to create the agency of the past. This is the agency of the future, which means that it's about creativity and capabilities and our capabilities are broad.”
Currently, the agency has 2,600 employees in North America. Some of its biggest clients in the region include Pfizer, T-Mobile, the U.S. Marine Corps and Boehringer Ingelheim.
That the agency has multiple female CEOs and executives at the leadership level played a role in Bamford's decision to join Wunderman Thompson, she said. Beyond Melofchik, other female leaders within the network include Global CEO Mel Edwards; Global Chief People Officer Maree Prendergast; Global Chief Marketing Officer Naomi Troni; Gobal Chief Client Officer Caroline Foster Kenny; Chief Growth Officer Laura Cona; and Global Chief Financial Officer Diane Holland.
“I'm genuinely excited about reporting to a female CEO,” Bamford said “Audrey’s got such an incredible background and such a strong vision and point of view for what she wants to create for North America. That's really inspiring for me.”
