Ogilvy Appoints Denise Zurilgen and Lauren Costa as Global Executive Creative Directors for IBM

Ogilvy today announced that Denise Zurilgen and Lauren Costa have joined the creative network as global executive creative directors for IBM. Together, Denise and Lauren will be responsible for driving the creative vision and cultural impact of this iconic brand as part of EightBar, a bespoke global team dedicated to IBM comprising strategy, creative, media, and data analytics expertise from across WPP, including Ogilvy and GroupM. The new roles mark a return to Ogilvy and the IBM business for both Denise and Lauren, having previously worked at the agency and on the IBM account.

Liz Taylor, global chief creative officer at Ogilvy, said, “In industries of every kind, technology is being creatively leveraged to drive a new and better future for the world - and IBM’s at the centre of it all as an innovative leader with an unbeatable heritage. Helping reach that future requires creative leaders who understand how to harness IBM’s immense brand power to drive its business potential - and do so across a global, integrated, ambitious team. Enter Denise and Lauren (or should I say re-enter, because I love an Ogilvy boomerang). This duo’s dreams know no bounds. They live to turn amazing ideas into even more impressive experiences, just like IBM. I can’t think of better creative leads for this long time partnership.”

Denise Zurilgen said, “IBM is a cutting-edge company - one that’s incredibly important, impactful, and one I deeply respect. With it being such a fascinating time in tech, especially with the advancement of AI, it’s exciting to return to Ogilvy to help this brand show up in ways that are as innovative as the company itself. I’m really looking forward to what we can create together.”

Lauren Costa said, “The partnership and collaboration between IBM and Ogilvy is so storied, and returning to be a part of that again is very special. Now more than ever, we need to find new, innovative and experimental ways for audiences to engage with brands. Together IBM and Ogilvy, bolstered by the very best of WPP’s capabilities, have the power to create those stories and experiences.”

Denise and Lauren added, “It’s a particularly important time for IBM as the B2B landscape is being shaped by the kind of emotion previously reserved for consumer audiences. At the end of the day, a ‘business’ doesn’t make a purchasing decision— - a person does. And they aren’t buying a t-shirt or a burger, they’re making a massive financial investment in a service that not only affects their performance and business outcomes, but those of their entire team and company. What’s more emotional than that?”

Through their prior Ogilvy tenure, Denise and Lauren contributed to such IBM work as ‘Made with IBM,’ an Effie-award winning series of 62 spots, running one time only during The Masters, as well as the award-winning projects ‘Datagrams’ - a mobile first experience that took US Open tennis data and turned it into beautiful animations, delivered to the crowd in real time - and ‘A Boy and His Atom’ - a movie made of actual individual atoms created to showcase the ground breaking work of IBM's Research Labs (it holds the Guinness World Record for 'The World's Smallest Stop-Motion Film'). 

Denise and Lauren bring a strong understanding of IBM at its best, and how it can continue to evolve its brand story for the greatest business impact. They return to the agency-brand team amid incredible creative momentum for the 30-year collaboration, including recent work for IBM AI on watsonx, and the 2022 launch of the ‘Let’s Create’ platform to accelerate innovation with clients and partners – the company’s most significant brand initiative in more than a decade. 

Denise and Lauren met while working at Ogilvy on IBM in 2012. They have since held creative leadership positions together at Droga5, leading clients such as Chase, Dixie, Xfinity and Air Wick. Most recently, Lauren served as executive creative director at JOAN Creative, which won Adweek’s Small Agency of the Year in 2022, while Denise worked as a VP creative director at MullenLowe NY. Lauren started her career at Wieden+Kennedy NY, where she helped launch the agency's first Social Media Lab, while Denise, an Art Center College of Design grad, started her career at TBWA\CHIAT\DAY in Los Angeles.