New Co-Presidents at the helm of Drake Cooper

Drake Cooper recently announced an update to their agency leadership with the appointment of Co-Presidents John Drake and Mindy Stomp.

From the post on their Reverb site:

John Drake will add the title of Co-President to his current role as Chief Strategy Officer, which he assumed in 2019. Since his teenage years, John has been around the agency, with his first role being the somewhat less-prestigious “Runner.” His official career began in Los Angeles at Deutsch, then moving to senior positions with WongDoody and leading his own agency, FourStories, in Portland before joining Drake Cooper fifteen years ago. That journey involved working on brands that included Disney, Carl’s Jr., Tillamook, DIRECTV, Nestlé, Baskin-Robbins, UCLA, and more. John’s role will be to oversee the agency’s work product. His teams will include planning & strategy, creative, media, and analytics.

The other Co-President is a new addition to Drake Cooper. After an extensive search process inside the industry, the agency is excited to welcome Mindy Stomp as Co-President, General Manager. Mindy will oversee the agency’s business operations, client success, and business development teams. She most recently held leadership positions with VMLY&R and brings to Drake Cooper a deep background built at agencies large and small. Her significant digital experience ranges from complex website build projects to leading digital AOR relationships. Her teams have led efforts for clients such as Facebook/Meta, SKYY Vodka, Carnival Cruise Lines, Crystal Cruises, Driscoll’s, Haas Automation, and Mazda.

Jamie Cooper will remain in the CEO role through 2022, and will continue after as chair of Drake Cooper’s ESOP Board of Directors.

Additional coverage at Adweek and Mediapost.

Carew Whoa!

Big news this morning for our friends over at Carew Co.

Earlier today it was announced that BrandCraft is expanding into Boise with the acquisition of Carew Co.

Based in the Richland, Washington, with an additional office in Spokane, BrandCraft is a “growth marketing firm” that offers a full suite marketing, advertising, and production services.

Paul Carew also shared some thoughts and insights on the change in a post on the BrandCraft blog.

Said BrandCraft CEO Torey Azure, “Adding Boise to our expansion is a big move in the right direction and I couldn’t be happier with the team that we are bringing on board. People matter, the right people matter, and we believe we struck gold with the new team. We couldn’t make this move, and be this confident in it, without adding the Carew Co. team.”

With this acquisition, Paul Carew now serves as Director of Creative & Content at BrandCraft. Also joining from Carew Co. are Senior Designers Thomas Walsh and Shailey Katsilometes, and Copywriter Julie Hahn as a contract partner.

Congratulations to everyone involved. We look forward to seeing what’s next.

Reunited

And then there was one.

Following up on the previous post about the Idaho Lottery RFP (that proved to be a bit of unintentional foreshadowing), we recently found that CLM shared the news that they were selected to handle the Idaho Lottery’s creative services:

This marks the first time in almost a decade that creative, strategy, and media will all be under the umbrella of a single agency, if memory serves.

Congratulations to CLM on the win.

Who will the next Lottery winner be?

Back in March, the Idaho Lottery issued a Creative Services Request for Proposal. Not unusual, given that it’s a state agency, and the RFP calendar and process is pretty cyclical.

The question of who will be selected to provide creatives services for the Lottery is still to be determined. But we know one agency it won’t be.

Yesterday, incumbent shop Mitchell Palmer shared a post and video on their LinkedIn page wishing their friends at the Idaho Lottery success in finding their next creative partner.

For background and context, Mitchell + Palmer was awarded the creative portion of the Lottery’s work in 2015, following a similar RFP process.

The new creative services contract is scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2021, according to the proposed timeline in the Idaho Lottery’s RFP. In 2012, the Lottery first issued separate contracts for creative and media. CLM has held the media portion of the contract since then, and added strategy in more recent years.