• by Larissa Faw , March 16, 2018

Matt Eastwood, worldwide chief creative officer at J. Walter Thompson is departing the agency as it "reimagines the future of the agency," says worldwide CEO Tamara Ingram in a statement. 

As part of that reimagining, the role of global creative chief is being shelved. “This was a structural decision that will allow the agency to be more agile, leverage our collective global bench strength and encourage the burgeoning diverse ‘maker culture’ growing within J. Walter Thompson,” Ingram added.

She also indicated that the worldwide creative council will continue to be “a pivotal part of our organization internally, and set standards and practices for how we improve the quality of our work…Additional strategic changes will include the use of technology to evaluate creative concepts at a much earlier stage. This will allow us to be iterative in real time and to ensure we are evolving our work to be stronger, more innovative and have a greater impact on our clients’ business."

Eastwood first joined the agency from DDB New York in 2014. In 2016, he helped to lead JWT to an historic year at Cannes, winning a total of 80 Lions.