Speaking at Miami Ad School in 2020.
Tom Christmann is a strategic thinker and creative leader who knows how to draw a crowd. He is currently freelancing for various agencies and brands. Tom is the creator and host of The A-List, a podcast that gathers the origin stories of advertising’s creative leaders. He is co-dean (with fellow creative Paul Fix) of Adhouse Advertising School. And he was co-founder and commissioner of the legendary Madmen Bowling League. In his spare time, he continues to produce iconic work at some of the best agencies and brands in the world.
In 2014, Tom became Chief Creative Officer at DiMassimo Goldstein, winning awards, new business and helping to reposition the agency mission as Inspiring Action. In 2011, Tom left his job as ECD on Kraft and Bloomberg at JWT and ventured out on his own, creating Mongo Industries, a coalition of freethinking marketing professionals. Or, as Tom calls it, "a strike force for awesomeness in brand communications."
Before JWT, Tom was ECD at Cliff Freeman & Partners, where he helped to bring Cliff’s unique brand of impactful storytelling into the twenty-first century on brands like Quiznos and Baskin Robbins. He also helped create a Favorite-Website-Award-winning website for an agency that wasn’t known for its digital chops.
Tom was lucky enough to work directly with some of advertising’s biggest names – including Gerry Graf, Greg Hahn, David Lubars and Eric Silver – on some of the world’s biggest brands (FedEx, Ebay, Guinness, Red Stripe and AOL to name a few) as a Creative Director at BBDO.
Tom credits his six years at Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners in New York – as well as his first job in advertising at Ogilvy & Mather Direct – with giving him an appreciation for proven results and new technologies.
He also once rode an elevator alone with David Ogilvy. What happened in that elevator will one day be the subject of a major motion picture. Wait, no. They rode in silence, it turns out. Pity.
Tom has won Cannes Lions, One Show Pencils, Andys, Addys, D&AD Awards, Effies, Clios, an Emmy nomination, an FWA and several games of Words With Friends.