Yusuf Chuku Joins Cheil USA

Cheil USA has hired JWT NY's former Global Planning Director, Yusuf Chuku, 38, as Chief Strategy Officer. Effective immediately, he reports to CEO Alex Van Gestel. He will lead consumer insight, brand planning and business innovation strategy, and will enable the growth of Cheil USA alongside CEO Alex Van Gestel and Chief Creative Officer Lars Bastholm.

 

Yusuf will act as the intellectual glue that will elevate Cheil USA’s integrated advertising, experiential marketing, design and digital offering to our clients, to help their brands seamlessly add value to peoples’ lives across channels. He is a rare “hybrid planner,” with extensive experience spanning across traditional brand and communications planning, digital strategy and media research.

 

Yusuf joins Cheil USA from JWT New York where he was the Global Planning Director responsible for Smirnoff. While at JWT he also led strategy for brands such as Kimberly-Clark (Kleenex, Kotex, Depend and Poise), Stride Gum and the global launch of Microsoft Office 2010.

 

Before JWT, Yusuf was a partner at the marketing consultancy Staufenberger, Smith & Butte, based in London. He was an advisor to organizations including BMW, Toshiba, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and GlaxoSmithKline. Beginning his career at DDB in London, Yusuf has also worked at Manning Gottlieb, Universal McCann and Naked Communications, on both national and international campaigns.

 

During his career he has won numerous awards including gold at the IPA Awards, Effies and Marketing Effectiveness Awards. Yusuf is also a member of the Association of Qualitative Researchers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was previously a Non-Executive Board Member of OFSTED (the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills in the UK).

 

Van Gestel created this new role for Yusuf at Cheil USA to solidify the leadership team with a highly experienced "hybrid" planner specialized in integrated marketing. In the past two months, Van Gestel has also (quietly) created a number of other new roles to round out the leadership team, hiring new heads of media, design, creative services, and account services. 

 

The new hires are as follows:

Yusuf Chuku, Chief Strategy Officer

Kristen Mordini, Executive Director of Account Services

Kelly Kraft, Head of Creative Services, Director of Production

Bea Leung, Group Media Director

Hoon Jung, Head of Design, Creative Director