Emily Chang Joins as CEO of Wunderman Thompson’s West Coast Region
Former McCann Worldgroup and brand-side marketer will oversee unified client portfolios and strengthen the agency’s position in California, Portland, and Seattle
NEW YORK (March 21, 2023)— Wunderman Thompson North America CEO Audrey Melofchik has appointed Emily Chang to lead its West Coast offices, including LA, Seattle, and the Swift boutique agency in Portland. This move will maximize the creative, data and technology agency’s position as one of the few large agencies on the West Coast backed with end-to-end capabilities.
“Emily is a powerhouse leader. She has tremendous vision, unparalleled energy, a pulse on culture and a gigantic heart,” said Audrey. She will bring our people together to deliver inspiring brand stories along with deep specialty expertise across the marketing ecosystem, so marketers have a partner to demonstrate real growth.”
Emily will oversee the region’s growing client portfolio, which includes technology companies Microsoft, T-Mobile, Qualcomm, Venmo and Snap, as well as major automotive brands and DTC companies. She will leverage Swift’s creative and social media expertise, which has garnered industry accolades for its work for Dove’s As Early As Five and attracts category disrupting brands. In addition, Emily will enhance Wunderman Thompson’s “Creative Bravery and “In it together” culture as part of her plan for West Coast agency operations.
Prior to returning home to Los Angeles, Emily spent nearly a decade in APAC, most recently as CEO of McCann Worldgroup, China, across four agencies located in three offices. In the last three years, she restructured the leadership team and developed new strategic and digital capabilities to grow revenue +40% within the first 18 months and deliver record high margins. During this period, her focus on creating a sense of belonging also dramatically improved employee satisfaction while reducing turnover by over 10%.
Emily’s built her career on the brand side, as CMO of Starbucks China, Chief Commercial Officer for InterContinental Hotels Group, Greater China, and she was the first executive in China for Apple Retail. Emily began her career in the United States at P&G, where she worked across all three business units, from upstream innovation, down to retail marketing at Walmart.
“Wunderman Thompson has creative as the heart, data as the brain and technology as the hands that make them the gold standard of integration,” said Emily. “As a competitor, I’ve watched Wunderman Thompson’s build its reputation as the authority on inspiration and look forward to tapping into this insight and adding inspiration of my own when it comes to our clients and culture.”
Emily teaches a masters course in Finance at NYU, is a member of the board of directors for SOS Children’s Villages, and recently published a best-selling book called “The Spare Room.” She has delivered four TEDx talks and has spoken at other industry-leading events like Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. She was recently named one of China’s 2022 Women to Watch. Over the past year, she’s served as a judge for the New York Festivals AME Awards, Effie Awards, ROI Festival and The Drum Awards.
Wunderman Thompson North America was named a 2023 Standout agency on Advertising Age’s coveted A-List earlier this month for its “eye on the future” of advertising. Over the past year, the agency has attracted next-generation talent to its leadership team, including Chief Creative Officer, Tom Murphy and was awarded the inaugural Grand Prix for BtoB Creativity at Cannes.
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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