NEW YORK — Weber Shandwick has tapped former MRM/McCann creative lead Sung Chang to oversee the firm’s strategic and creative teams worldwide as its first chief impact officer.

In the newly created role, Chang is charged with bolstering the strategy and creative functions’ output, with a focus on using data & analytics, technology and emerging platforms to fuel ideas and tell stories more effectively.

He brings more than 20 years of advertising, design and digital experience to the role, the last four of which he spent at MRM (which, like Weber Shandwick, is IPG-owned) as chief creative officer. In that role, he led a 120-person creative team for the customer relationship agency, supporting brands such as USPS, GSK and Coca-Cola.

Prior to MRM, Chang was an executive creative director at AKQA where he led a team specializing in mobile, platform, ecommerce, branding, UX, experiential and retail work. He was also executive creative director and senior partner at Ogilvy, leading a team focused on digital, mobile, print and broadcast.
 

"This role reflects and addresses a current and future reality for our clients.  Effective work is the endgame. And we know effective work is about cohering strategy with creative — with earned ideas at the core of a complex and ever-changing ecosystem," said president and CEO Gail Heimann. “We created the chief impact officer leadership role not to blur the lines but to redraw them to deliver what clients need to succeed.  It’s an important first for us and the industry. With Sung’s leadership we will continue to raise the bar on insight-driven work that makes a difference."

Said Chang: "This isn’t just about elevating creativity’s role in our work — it’s about breaking the boundaries of the art-plus-copy creative approach broadly by focusing on the more critical partnership between creative and strategy. It’s a unique opportunity to deliver creative that is deeply, inextricably bound to strategy and designed to ultimately raise the bar on effectiveness for our work and for our clients."

Hiring Chang is the latest in a series of executive changes, which included a reshuffle of global leaders, since Heimann became CEO last July.