-114300-571500CLAUDINE CHEEVER on a page00CLAUDINE CHEEVER on a pageI’ve always related to that description of left brain/right brain people. Great creative solutions come from a big juicy blend of rigor and random, operations and theory, capitalism and art. I am happiest when I have one foot in each camp.<br />I started my career sharpening pencils and reading manuscripts for a pretty famous editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell back in the 90s when publishing books still had some intellectual glamour and people still smoked in their offices. I was professionally weaned on the truth only a good story can provide and helped edit several NYT bestselling books including Fire in the Belly, if you remember the men’s movement.<br />My advertising career began at a youth marketing agency in Southern California where I worked on action sports, fashion, and beauty brands. Some of our work became a chapter in Malcolm Gladwell’s first book, and my thinking on SKYY Vodka repositioned the brand from quirky blue bottle to sexy bar call, growing the business 20% every year I was there. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I was also a cool hunter, scouring Shibuya and nightclubs and record stores for cultural trends and style archetypes. I developed great instincts, good taste, and an appreciation for the power of design and craft.<br />I was hired by Ogilvy and Mather as a planning director on Barbie and Motorola, where I learned discipline and <br />intellectual rigor. I remember spending three days locked away with the other planners at a pre-renovation Algonquin, emerging with mastery of every type of quantitative research. I kept the other half of my brain happy playing the role of cultural insights expert on Motorola when it dominated the handset market.<br />I spent the bulk of my career at Goodby Silverstein and Partners, where I rose from Planning Director to Deputy Director. We won every new business pitch I strategized, from Comcast to Doritos. I developed a new brief and new way of working as we merged media planning and brand planning into one strategy group, initiated by my symbolic invitation to share my office with our media planning director. We sat at the same little round table from IKEA for two years. I ran recruiting for the department, catalyzed departmental culture and solidarity, established myself as “able to rock the C-Level,” and managed a team of 8 brilliant planners many of whom I’ll never stop trying to hire again.<br />At Saatchi & Saatchi I have turned over 60% of a 34 person department to create a holistic group of comms planners, social media babies, whipsmart analysts, everyone digitally savvy and idea-driven. I’ve taken a dated practice and introduced and operationalized business analysis, media creativity, better logic and intellectual rigor, and tighter orchestration with creative development. I’ve revamped our approach to new business with my partner and dear friend CCO, resulting in our first wins in years. I’ve begun taking our new way of working out to the global network as the new prescribed S&S approach. Most of all, I’ve become the emotional mouthpiece of our New York agency, sitting as a key member of the management team with my personal goal of making the work better, by making it a better place to work.<br />