Rethink New York Has Fire in Its Belly

“To make it in the US you need fire in your belly. You have to want it, you have to be relentless, and you have to be brilliant.”

Tara Lawall knows this first-hand. As chief creative officer of Rethink New York—the US outpost of the independent Canadian powerhouse—she’s living it. And with a track record that includes key roles in the rise of Droga5, 72andSunny, and Anomaly, she speaks from experience.

“Rethink New York has that ambition,” she continues, “and we have the team and 350 extremely talented, wildly award-winning Canadians behind us at all times. It’s all for the taking and I’m excited to really unleash what we can do.”

The collaboration between those 350 folk in Canada and the smaller—but growing—team in New York is always, says Tara, additive and thoughtful. “It’s a highly communicative company and everything we do is intentional.” So, if it serves the project at hand to share resources, they share. If there is a unique skillset in Vancouver for a project in New York, Tara and the team can tap it. If Toronto needs something specific that they excel at in New York, they chip in. “The talent pool across the network is vast and we are all so excited about the success of Rethink as a whole that we share and make every project as strong and relevant as it can be.”

Tara joined Rethink New York in September 2023 as executive creative director, working with then CCO Daniel Lobatón. Daniel has since left to join DAVID, with Tara taking the reins as CCO in August of last year. Since then, she’s focused on recruiting top-tier talent in New York—people capable of crafting high-level, 360-degree work. “When you pair that with the unmatched activation and cultural breakthrough work that Rethink is known for, it's an exciting offering,” she says.

Leading an agency as CCO for the first time, Tara is driven by a commitment—to both her team and herself. “I feel a great responsibility to my people to make great work,” adds Tara. “And I feel a great responsibility to myself to show that I can create a culture where our passion for the work is only matched by our passion for a great experience of getting to that work.”

Building the Future of Rethink New York

In 2025, her focus is twofold: putting great work into the world and fostering an environment where her teams feel free to be their best selves.

“Our work is brilliant and original and like nothing I’ve ever seen before and I have worked at the absolute best agencies in New York.” Plus, she wants to find the ambitious partners who want to do the “relevant, truth-driven” work that she associates with Rethink. “Our style creates work that outsizes media buys, by design. This is the work that is going to breakthrough in 2025.”

But beyond the work itself, Tara is intent on building something that she has never experienced before; the agency she always wished existed in New York. “So I’m finding that… hard,” she admits. “But I like things that are hard.”

She often talks about this with Rich Greco, the agency’s ECD of design, who she says coined the phrase ‘progress at a pace’. “We just need to keep moving forward. Little wins. Getting a little better each day.”

The difficulty that Tara speaks of isn’t just about Rethink—it’s about the realities of the advertising industry in 2025. It’s fast-paced, time-starved, and often leaves creatives feeling like they don’t have the space to fully flex their creative muscles. It’s not a critique of Rethink, but rather a broader observation of modern-day advertising.

“Creating and nurturing a creative environment is perhaps my favourite thing about being a creative leader and what I believe to be the most important part of my job,” says Tara. “I believe that people bring their best, most unique, special, original ideas forward when they feel safe and seen.”

Since her job is to create and sell those unique, original ideas, Tara believes fostering that kind of environment is non-negotiable, and something that she delights in doing. “I’m fascinated and delighted by people’s unique brilliance and cultivating that creativity, shaping it and then releasing it into the world to delight, captivate, and entertain other people… that’s where this job gets really fun.

“When I hear creative leaders say ‘just focus on the work’ to the unsaid detriment of the people there is nothing that confounds me more, or frankly, makes me more angry. People are what makes the work. Take care of the people and the work will always be original.”