nigel carr

Brainstormer, Business adviser, Business mentor, Connector, Foodie, Global soul, Idea generator, Jewish, Marketer, World traveler

“my job is to get passionate about brands. because if i can't, then how can i expect somebody else to. i try to work out what will motivate people to go beyond just buying a brand & actually advocate for it. i'm an irrepressible strategist.” Since he got his start in advertising as a planner in London in 1980, Nigel has personally talked with over 11,000 people about brands & analyzed data from millions of interviews. He believes a planner’s job is to simplify mountains of information into an inspirational jumping-off point for great creative ideas. A great story that inspires a great campaign. He’s equally passionate about making that campaign effective—and spends a lot of time figuring out how to leverage the idea to interact with every audience, in every channel, about every product or service that will drive the brand’s success. He moved to America in 1983 but still claims to enjoy the perspective of being a foreigner. He has won 11 EFFIES (the industry’s advertising effectiveness awards), including 2 Grand EFFIES and 6 Golds, sat on the 4A’s Account Planning committee for 9 years and has been a frequent speaker at communications and marketing conferences. Prior to Ogilvy, Nigel was Planning Director at Chiat/Day in New York from 1984 until 1991, helping that office grow from 18 to over 300 people. In 1991 he joined kirshenbaum bond + partners, moving downtown to launch their account planning capability, & immediately renamed the discipline ‘brand planning’. In 1997, having helped the agency grow its first office from 15 to over 200 people in New York, he left to open its second -- kbpwest in San Francisco, where he was Managing Partner/General Manager for seven years. He defined the San Francisco version of kb&p with a way of working he called ‘passion branding’ that helped take kbpwest from one employee in summer 1997 to 35 people and $75 million in billings by 2004. Between Kirshenbaum and Ogilvy, Nigel’s old creative director partner at kb&p, Mark DiMassimo asked him to come back to New York and be Head of Strategy at DiMassimo Brand Advertising. They rebranded the agency as DiMassimo Carr Brand Advocates, did some interesting work together and won 3 significant new accounts (Duvel Belgian beer, Lord Abbett mutual funds and the relaunch of Joseph Abboud, the men’s fashion designer). However they determined they weren’t going to grow the agency to the size they had initially hoped. They decided to part friends and still brainstorm campaign ideas over dinner. Nigel has worked on local, national and international brands including Hennessy Cognac, Sara Lee, NYNEX Yellow Pages, Glenfiddich, Grand Marnier, Prudential, Snapple, Citibank, CNBC, The Biography Channel, BBC America, wine.com, Carvel, IHOP, Mother’s Cookies, PeopleSoft, Cisco, Iron City Beer, The British Government and more. He is a member of Ogilvy New York’s Operating Board but has gone back to his planning roots and is currently hard at work simplifying complex strategic issues into compelling stories for clients such as Morgan Stanley and Kraft. Nigel maintains two bicycles as his primary mode of transportation in his two favourite cities, New York and San Francisco. His San Francisco bike is the better of the two.

minds colliding--agree/disagree/argue/surprise/be surprised/laugh. the perspective of suddenly being somewhere else via travel, reading or conversation. the compression of poetry, art, stories & ideas

the power of stories to inspire people to do things they previously did not intend to do.

advertising, branding and creating a brand experience, being honest about what’s working, digging in and learning fast, figuring out what to do next, getting insights from qualitative & quantitative research, having a point of view early on, inspiring people to do something, integrating communications to every touch-point, transforming users into brand advocates, turning those insights into a story that a team agrees to act on

listening. urban biking survivor. amateur sommelier.