Jim Curtis departs McCann New York for chief creative officer role at LePub, NYC

Former Clemenger BBDO Australia chief creative officer Jim Curtis, who departed the agency for the EVP, Global Creative Director role at McCann New York in September 2023, has been appointed chief creative officer of the newly launched NYC office of global boutique network LePub.

LePub, part of Publicis Groupe, opened the New York office in January, with founding clients Heineken and Barilla. Curtis will report to Milan-based LePub worldwide CEO/CCO Bruno Bertelli.

Over the last 12 months at McCann Curtis led all creative output on Mastercard. Prior to that he oversaw all creative output from a group of clients within the McCann New York office, including Instax, NYX Cosmetics, SAS Analytics, MGM and Qualcomm.

Curtis joined Clemenger BBDO in June 2020 from an awarded five year stint at Droga5 New York, returning to the States for family reasons.

Work created under his leadership at Clems include the Cannes Lion/D&AD winning VB Solar Exchange and FightMND campaigns, and campaigns for Carlton Dry and Carlton Draught.

Notable work created by Curtis at Droga5 included several mini-series for Mailchimp, a documentary with Gotham Chopra for Under Armour, and selling Australia to the world under the guise of a Crocodile Dundee reboot.

Prior to Droga5, Curtis had creative stints in Australia at BMF, DDB and The Leap Agency.

His work has been awarded at all major international shows, including Titanium at Cannes, yellow pencils at D&AD and gold at the Effies, One Show, Sirens, AWARD and Webby awards. He is also the recipient of the first-ever Logie for Most Popular Television Commercial.

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