• by Fern Siegel , March 7, 2022

IPG creative company Elephant upped Chris May to a newly created post: Chief Creative Officer. His charge is to set the creative vision for the agency, while attracting key talent.

May reports to Elephant CEO Eric Moore, who called the promotion a “natural evolution.”

“We’ve worked hard at Elephant to grow and promote our talent from within. Chris is one of our original team members, and has driven our evolution from an embedded team in Cupertino to the creative company we are today,” Moore said.

As CCO, May will oversee creative for Elephant’s founding client, Apple, as well as clients across regions, including Comcast, Electronic Arts, Marc Jacobs and Realtor.com.

Based in San Francisco, May will manage the executive creative directors who run the creative departments for each region: East and West.

May joined Elephant in 2016 and helped expand its client roster with various wins, such as Beats by Dre, Kia Motors, Twitch, and Electronic Arts, as well as enlarging Apple’s creative reach.

Prior to Elephant, May held creative leadership roles at Razorfish (Berlin) and AKQA (London and Berlin). He has worked on many global brands, including Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Adidas, Channel 4, Montblanc, MTV and Sainsbury’s.

“While my direct responsibilities are leadership of creative, our philosophy extends to the way we approach the world, independent of any single discipline,” said May. He said he would be “ fostering a diverse team of creative talent, unifying our vision and creating work that makes an impact.”