Ellie Bamford Joins Wunderman Thompson North America as CSO

Wunderman Thompson North America CEO Audrey Melofchik announced today that R/GA’s Ellie Bamford will join the creative, data and technology agency’s executive team as Chief Strategy Officer.  Ellie’s appointment rounds out Audrey’s leadership vision to fulfill CMO’s needs for end-to-end capabilities and to deliver inspiration across the entire brand and customer experience.     

Audrey said, "Ellie's ability to think about ideas and channels fluidly is perfect for our ambidextrous skill set at Wunderman Thompson. She has a deep expertise of the ever-changing media landscape coupled with a sharp eye for insights, strategy, and a love of creativity. On top of all that, she has boundless energy and a passion for helping clients grow. We are going to move mountains together.”    

 “Ellie is an outstanding strategist with a strong perspective on the future of brands. Her connections planning expertise gives her the superpower to reach across the table to show clients where their work will have the most inspiring impact in culture,” said Neil Dawson, Global Chief Strategy Officer.  

As Global Head of Media, Connections and Influence at R/GA, Ellie led strategy for R/GA across the network and unlocked innovative creative opportunities for clients, such as last year’s “Superb Owl”, Reddit’s 5-second Super Bowl ad. The New York Times named the innovation (which was made within a week) the “unlikely Super Bowl winner,” and the work earned a Cannes Lions Grand Prix.  

Over her 20+ year career, Ellie has created progressive, award winning work for Pepsi, Nike, FILA, Uber, Rockstar Games, Samsung, Spotify, Sephora, American Express and more. In 2022, she was recognized by Ad Age for creating the unexpected and growing revenue in her group by 50 percent.    

At Wunderman Thompson, Ellie will oversee strategy across North America with a focus on driving breakthrough creativity and business growth for clients, strengthening talent and integrated partnerships across capabilities.     

“Traditional brands were built to market static products. But modern brands are the opposite of static. We interact directly with products and services via branded interfaces every day. These experiences must be dynamic, data informed, and adaptive. If the work we create for brands is not deeply connected to how it lives in the real world for real people, it won’t be inspiring or effective. My access to Wunderman Thompson’s deep expertise across all aspects of marketing will allow us to make every piece of work deliver something wonderful and valuable for the human who sees it,” said Ellie.  

As a member of the LGBTQIA community, Ellie is known for pushing change and ensuring diversity within her teams and the work they create. This approach has led Ellie to be the strategic mastermind behind work for Sephora, helping to change the search experience to push discovery of Black Beauty content and brands and shine a light on bias. This work for Sephora and Black Beauty is a multi-show award winner culminating with a Silver Cannes Lion.     

She has served as a judge for Cannes Lions, Young Lions and was appointed Jury Chair for the Clios in 2023.  As an opinion leader, she has been featured in The New York Times, Ad Age, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Vogue, Adweek, Wired and as a key speaker at events including Cannes Lions, Advertising Week US & LATAM, Contagious, and DMEXCO.   

Since her appointment as CEO of Wunderman Thompson North America in December 2021, Audrey Melofchik has been thoughtfully building an ambidextrous team with ambitious vision for the agency’s growth.  This team includes Chief Creative Officer Tom Murphy, New York CEO Sasan Saedi, Chief Experience Officer Preeya Vyas, Global Head of Design, Josh Loebner, Chief Growth Officer, Laura Cona, Chief Client Officer, Carrie Philpott and most recently Global Chief Creative Officer of Wunderman Thompson Health, Renata Maia.   Ellie will report to Audrey, as well as Neil Dawson, Global Chief Strategy Officer for Wunderman Thompson.  

About Wunderman Thompson           

At Wunderman Thompson we exist to inspire growth for ambitious brands. Part creative agency, part consultancy and part technology company, our experts provide end-to-end capabilities at a global scale to deliver inspiration across the entire brand and customer experience. 

We are 20,000 strong in 90 markets around the world, where our people bring together creative storytelling, diverse perspectives, inclusive thinking, and highly specialized vertical capabilities, to drive growth for our clients. We offer deep expertise across the entire customer journey, including communications, commerce, consultancy, CRM, CX, data, production, and technology. 

In 2020, Wunderman Thompson launched Inspire, a proprietary global platform that explores what makes brands inspiring and what inspires consumers. Rooted in a rigorous, multidimensional research methodology, the platform identifies the qualities a brand must embody, the narratives it should weave, and the experiences it can design to spark people’s inspiration and culminates in an annual list of the Inspire Score Top 100 Most Inspiring Brands in the World.  

Wunderman Thompson is a WPP agency (NYSE: WPP).          

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