When someone hands you a 300-page deck explaining how their agency thinks about creativity, the polite response is generally to nod, flip through it on the train home, and send a gracious note the next morning.
Obele Brown-West added 200 pages.
Ms. Brown-West, who served as president of Colle McVoy, the Minneapolis agency known for its work with clients like Sharpie and the Minnesota Twins, officially became chief executive and partner at Folklore last week. The move brings her to the independent creative agency co-founded by Mike Matheny, who serves as chief operating officer, and whose 300-page creative manifesto apparently met its match.
"The minute I started talking with her, I was like, 'This is not a surface level talk,'" Mr. Matheny told Adweek, in what may qualify as understatement given the paperwork involved.
By her own account, Ms. Brown-West had not been looking to leave Colle McVoy, which has operated independently under the Omnicom umbrella since 2020. But a series of conversations with Lorenz Esguerra, then the chief executive of Folklore and a friend and mentor to Ms. Brown-West, evolved from casual to forward-looking. (In the advertising business, one rarely hears of conversations that evolve from forward-looking to casual.)
At Folklore, Ms. Brown-West will oversee business operations while working with Mr. Matheny to shape the agency's direction. The arrangement places her at an independent shop at a moment when the industry's attention has drifted back toward agencies that do not require organizational charts printed on architectural paper.
What exactly those 500 combined pages contain remains, for now, between the principals. But the document's existence suggests that Folklore, at least, has thought through its creative philosophy at a length that would make most holding company mission statements look like Post-it notes.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Folklore Hires Colle McVoy President to Lead Agency Into the Future"