O’Keefe Reinhard & Paul is adding a level to its creative leadership with the promotion of Aubrey Walker to the new role of Executive Creative Director. He assumes leadership of the agency’s creative department from Laura Fegley who left the agency this summer.
Walker has led the agency’s recent work for The Illinois Lottery, including the new Holiday Classic campaign, Watch Claude, an online interactive experience and film.
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He also led the agency’s launch of “Black Shop Friday,” an initiative to support over 500 black-owned businesses in Chicago in partnership with The Chicago Urban League and City of Chicago.
“Aubrey’s made a huge positive impact on our agency in a very short time. At our best, we’re about “feel,” in our work and culture, and Aubrey embodies this in everything he does,” said Tom O’Keefe, CEO of OKRP. “He’s exactly the leader this agency, and quite frankly, our city needs and I’m excited for our next era under his leadership.”
Walker joined OKRP full time in February after working at the agency as a freelancer. The veteran copywriter and creative leader previously worked at such agencies as Carol H. Williams, Burrell, The TRUE Agency, Globalhue, commonground, GMR, MKTG and FCBX before starting his own independent freelance consultancy.
“OKRP is an agency that embraces change and revolutionary thinking, creativity and strategy and those are most important things to me” said Walker. “People who succeed here look at ideas through a lens of not just creating ads, but business ideas. There is an entrepreneurial spirit that enables you to give life to ideas beyond marketing, and that empowers me and others to want to do amazing work that can help change folk’s perspectives about what they think about our brands.”
Over the course of his career, Walker has created award winning campaigns for a wide variety of brands including Tide, Gatorade, Nike, Jeep Call of Duty, Coors Light, Bacardi and many more. His work crosses all channels through traditional and digital and new media formats.
