Nancy Hannon

contact | nancyellenhannon@gmail.com | 847.999.8107

Global Executive Creative Director

Award winning creative leader.  Highly strategic and excels in storytelling, relationship building and managing large and complex global businesses.  A collaborative, organized, intuitive and inspirational leader managing cross-functional integrated teams resulting in brand building and award winning work.

Ogilvy NY/Chicago 2016 - Present

Global Executive Creative Director

Leading the creative growth of some of the agency’s largest global brands for SCJohnson's Glade, Kiwi, Lysoform, Pledge, Mrs. Meyers, Shout, Kabi Killer, Mr. Muscle, Duck and Scrubbing Bubbles. She helps drive the creative agenda on brands in North America, Latin America, the UK, China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. The messages are meticulous in a 360 multi-channel holistic storytelling approach, from platform idea, to video, through to integrated social media campaigns and influencers to amplify and resonate. 

Nancy currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Sun-Times. Through that leadership she has helped rebrand the organization to give it a more meaningful position in the news media market for business growth. She is building an innovative marketing department within the media organization and is mentoring newly hired senior female leadership within the organization. 

Nancy is a Board Member of Women Employed and currently designing an entire rebrand so as to help make the organization more modern and helping to communicate the mission of safety and equity in the work place.

Leo Burnett 2014 – 2016

EVP Global Executive Creative Director

Global Always #LikeAGirl, Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Special K.

As the Global Executive Creative Director, Nancy was responsible for executing the global creative vision for the Always brand and propelling the global phenomenon #LikeAGirl Emoji. That idea confronted stereotypes in our most global language, emojis. With help from girls around the world they discovered the gender bias of all emojis; the professional caricatures were masculine, while the feminine caricatures were pink and frivolous. Through the #LikeAGirl Emoji social experiment the brand motivated Michelle Obama to tweet about emojis and stereotypes. The partnership continued with FLOTUS’ #Let Girls Learn initiative. Through further engagement with girls the brand successfully encouraged the Unicode Consortium to add icons that reflect the modern woman hence making #LikeAGirl Emoji the number one ad on Youtube in March 2016 and the work drew over 1.5 billion earned impressions and over 51,000,000 views. The New York Stock Exchange invited #LikeAGirl to ring their bell and Emma Watson, Justin Trudeau, Arianna Huffington, and Steven Colbert all tweeted their support. Eventually Google announced that they would start producing emojis that represent professional woman.

During the 2016 Rio Olympics she launched Keep Playing #LikeAGirl due to the fact that fifty percent of girls quit sports at puberty, when their confidence drops. Nancy and team discovered that society actively discourages girls from participating in sports in implicit and explicit ways. They partnered with US Women’s Soccer player, Alex Morgan, and communicated the mission through an integrated social media campaign, actively encouraging girls to keep playing #LikeAGirl. 

While at Leo Burnett, Nancy, served as the executive sponsor for an initiative to help retain female creative talent and help make the agency a more desirable place to work for creative women and moms.

Energy BBDO 2013 – 2014

EVP Executive Creative Director

Pepsico Quaker, Citracal Calcium Supplements, Flinstones Vitamins & One-A-Day Vitamins, New Business

 As creative lead on Bayer nutritionals including Citracal Calcium Supplements, Nancy’s work shed a light on the fact that women, aged fifty-plus, are quite proud of their age. These women have spent their whole lives fighting stereotypes and defiance is truly in their bones. Citracal became their ally in the fight against aging. The campaign idea plays with the misconceptions of age, beauty, and women. Using dynamic moving skeletons to reveal older women who are strong and beautiful and defying the negative effects of aging in a deeply inspiring way. Defiance never grows old and defiance is in our bones. 

As creative lead on Quaker Oats she believed that moms needed to take care of themselves in order to take care of everyone else. Nancy discovered that moms needed to learn how to be more selfish and launched a Facebook initiative in social media to teach moms how to “Speak Selfish”.

The Martin Agency 2008 -2013

SVP Group Creative Director

Walmart, Living Social, American Cancer Society, Opportunity International, Hanes, Comcast

As the creative leader of Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, she helped change the way 200 million moms perceived Walmart by positioning Walmart as a force of good versus a force of evil through creative campaign platform, Save Money, Live Better. This platform allowed moms to save more so that their families could live a better life. She led creative development for all categories of Walmart North America with a $350 million marketing communications budget contributing to increased same store sales during “The Great Recession”. She seamlessly handled dozens of campaigns with hundreds of moving parts integrated across multiple media touch points to define a consistent brand voice and create award winning work. As an expert in retail, the work resonated with 200 million moms in every category that exists in the retail environment.

She initiated a project with the National Women’s History Museum in an effort to raise public awareness around the lack of, and need for, a National Women’s History Museum on the National Mall and demonstrate that support online via Change.org. The existence of a museum on the National Mall affirms the value of knowing Women’s History, illuminates the role of women in transforming society and encourages all people, women and men, to participate in democratic dialogue about our future. 

Y&R Chicago 2004 – 2008

VP Creative Director

Sears, New Business

Freelance Creative Director / Art Director 1999 - 2004

Clients: Johnson & Johnson Skincare, Gerald Stevens Floral Corp., Proctor & Gamble Always, JC Penney, Sears, Energizer, U.S. Professional Women’s Volleyball, CB2

Leo Burnett - Chicago 1990 -1999

Art Director VP/Creative Director

Reebok Extreme Sports and Women’s Sports & Fitness, Weebok, Noxzema, Secret Deodorant, Clarion Cosmetics, Kraft, Maytag, Oldsmobile, Tropicana, Kellogg’s, and Miller Brewing Company

Awards

Cannes Lions Grand Prix, Gold, Silver & Bronze Lions | One Show Pencils | Clio Gold | AICP | RACIE | D&AD | ADC | New York Film Festival | Eurobest | Addy’s | Webby | Adweek’s Best Spots | Archive Magazine | Effie | Creativity | Communications Arts

Agent for Change

Board of Directors Member, Chicago Sun Times

Board of Directors Member, Women Employed

University of Chicago Womens’s Board

Served as panelists for the 3% Conference

Proud member of the Art Director’s Club 50/50 Initiative

The Martin Agency 2008 -2013