Young & Rubicam

After spending nearly 18 months as president of Y&R New York, Jane Barratt is leaving the agency to “pursue other opportunities.” As a result of her departure, Tom Sebok, current president/CEO of Y&R North America, will be stepping in to fill the role.

With Sebok taking over for Barratt, Y&R global CEO David Sable will assume responsibility for the North American region for the time being. In a statement, the chief exec says, “We have an absolutely fantastic new Chief Creative Officer in Jim Elliott.  We have brought back Channel Planning with the appointment of Sue Kaufman, fine-tuned our approach to Brand Planning with the addition of Chip Walker, and built a competitive new business machine under Chris Hayes.  The tough news is behind us. We need to invest in this moment with the most experienced leadership and support.”

We’ve received confirmation that Y&R Chicago has cut seven staffers. From what spies are telling us, the reductions were made across departments including creative, planning and account. We’re still waiting for clarification on this. As you all know, Sears Holdings did hand over its lead creative/strategic duties to McGarryBowen in May after it was handled by Y&R Chicago for 18 years . Think that may have had something to do with this?

Update: Yes, we’ve been told cuts were made across departments and Sears was to blame.

Mere weeks after Y&R’s San Francisco office had to cut staff due to a need for a “talent upgrade” among other things, the agency’s New York branch has done the same. While business loss was once again not a factor, this time we’ve been told by sources familiar with the matter that “rightsizing took place in an effort to run the office as efficiently as possible.” In total, seven staffers across the creative and strategy departments were let go.

Doug Sweeny, most recently VP of global brand marketing at Levi Strauss & Co, is headed back to the agency side as he’s taking on the post of president at Y&R West, which give him jurisdiction over the network’s San Francisco and Irvine offices. As a result of signing on, Sweeny, who will be based in SF, will re-team with Joe Kayser, his old buddy from Chiat San Francisco who joined up as CCO of Y&R’s West Coast operations after the demise of Cutwater.

Before his move to the client side, Sweeny was MD at Chiat SF and ran the global business for Adidas during its “Impossible is Nothing” phase (here’s to you, KG). Prior to Chiat, Sweeny was VP, account director at Hal Riney & Partners, where he led the Saturn business.

So the “big layoffs” that were apparently happening this week at Y&R Chicago weren’t as “big” as tipsters implied. Our sources have confirmed that Y&R Chicago has cut five staffers–three in creative, two on the account side–resulting from the “restructuring of departments under Bob Winter,” who of course came on board as the agency’s CCO’s last October.

Now that the Ian Reichenthal/Scott Vitrone era  is over, Y&R New York has found a new creative leader in Jim Elliott, who will be joining the agency as chief creative officer. Elliott arrives from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, where he spent the last five years as GCD on Haagen-Dazs, Hyundai, Denny’s, HP, Netflix and Yahoo and was part of the team that won the agency the Sonic account.

Though Elliott won’t assume his new title until June, once he does, he will (obviously) be responsible for overseeing creative for Y&R clients including Land Rover, Campbell’s, Dell, LG, Dannon, Fisher-Price, the NHL, UNCF, Virgin Atlantic and Xerox. Prior to Goodby, Elliott served as a creative director at Cole & Weber United and had a stint at Mullen as well. Y&R’s global CCO Tony Granger says in a statement that Elliott’s hire is an “evolution” of the agency’s Big Apple branch, adding, “Jim is a fantastic creative leader, who enjoys drawing the best out of his teams.  We’re excited he’s joining ours.”

It’s been over six months since Bob “The Real Men of Genius guy” Winter took over as CCO at Y&R Chicago, and now, sources familiar with the matter confirm that he’s posted his first account win as creative boss, that being the adult playground known as Dave & Buster’s.

From what we’ve been told by our sources, Y&R beat out the likes of Crispin and BBDO in the pitch for the restaurant/arcade chain’s business. Dallas-based Dave & Buster’s previously awarded its creative duties to Omnicom’s Merkley + Partners in the fall of 2008.

Ever wanted to see @charliesheen tweet, “Let’s be real guys. I’m lonely, sad and just desperate for a hug.” What about @McDonalds tweet, “Honestly, no one should ever eat our food. People who do are fat suckers.” Maybe you just really want to see @ChryslerAutos tweet, “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive.” Wait…forget that last one.

Now you can with the TweetForger, a new website from that jerk copywriter who conned his way into a job at Y&R NY, Alec Brownstein, and that flash-enthused McCann designer whose goal in life is to piss off Steve Jobs, Mat Bisher. All you have to do is go to TweetForger’s website, enter the Twitter profile you want to spoof and then type in what you want it to say.

The finished product looks a little something like this. All in all, it’s a fun way to spoof your friends and co-workers who take Twitter way to seriously on this ridiculous holiday.

Sources familiar with the matter confirm that Y&R San Francisco has cut approximately 15 employees, seven of them being full-time staffers and the rest freelancers. The layoffs, which affected all departments, weren’t due to business loss, but a need for a “talent upgrade” and to give the SF office a “shot of energy” according to our sources. As you know, both Y&R SF and L.A. are now under the creative leadership of Cutwater alum Joe Kayser, who joined as West Coast CCO earlier this month. Here’s the statement below:

“In our continual efforts to run our North American operations as efficiently as possible and to align our talent with our clients’ needs, we have parted ways with a small group of both free-lance and full-time employees from our San Francisco office.”

And while they’re at it with the talent upgrade, Y&R SF might want to do the same for their site, which is rather barebones to say the least.

Former Cutwater ECD/GCD Joe Kayser is stepping in to take the CCO post at Y&R West Coast, where he will now lead creative in the San Francisco and LA offices across all clients including Chevron, Citrix, Jenny Craig, Mattel, NCAA and Roundtable Pizza.

While at the now-defunct Cutwater (ed- it closed in January), Kayser (pictured) handled day-to-day creative work for the likes of Jeep, Adidas, LensCrafters, Persol and Google among others. As Kayser joins the Y&R fold, the agency’s West Coast president John Berg is stepping down and its North American president/CEO Tom Sebok will assume his responsibilities for the time being until a permanent successor is found.

According to the Y&R camp, Kayser’s hire is just one of “many” changes under the watch of newly installed global CEO David Sable. We’ve been told the agency will be hiring more staff in the days ahead. As for Kayser’s background, prior to Y&R, he held creative posts at TBWA\Chiat\Day SF, Hill Holliday, Hal Riney & Partners and Saatchi & Saatchi.