Corinna Falusi will leave her position as chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather New York to take on the same role at the Manhattan offices of independent agency Mother, effective Dec. 1.
Falusi spent the past four and a half years with the Ogilvy organization, where she ran creative on the the Coke Zero, Coca-Cola, Ikea, Tiffany and Amex Open accounts. After joining the WPP shop as a senior partner and executive creative director in 2012, Falusi was promoted to creative chief last January after her predecessor Calle Sjöenell left to return to his native Sweden and run creative for Lowe Brindfors.
"We feel Corinna belongs here at Mother," said founding partner and creative chairman Paul Malmstrom in a statement. "She has a magical mix of talent, ambition, and soulfulness. With her, we'll continue to bring even greater expressions of creativity to our clients."
Chief executive and partner Peter Ravailhe cited Falusi's "wonderful energy" in explaining the hire, adding, "With her relentless pursuit of excellence, in craft and creativity, Corinna will add incredible value to the brands we love to work with, and to Mother as a whole."
An Ogilvy spokesperson declined to comment on Falusi's pending departure, which was announced in an internal all-staff memo last week. But a source close to the agency said Ogilvy is currently searching for a replacement CCO and that the shop is considering both internal and external candidates.
In the memo, Ogilvy & Mather North America chief creative officer Steve Simpson wrote: "We can feel sad about this—nobody who worked with her can help it—but the most important thing to do is thank her: for her work, her mentorship and her partnership, which she gave to us fully for over four years, every single day."
Falusi, a German native, began her agency career as an art director at Hamburg's Jung Von Matt and later spent nearly a decade at StrawberryFrog in Amsterdam and New York, working on such accounts as P&G, Heineken, Coca Cola, Panasonic and New Balance before joining Ogilvy.
She was included in this year's Adweek Creative 100 thanks in part to her work on Coke Zero's "drinkable advertising" effort and a Philips Norelco campaign in which stylist Mark Bustos gave free haircuts to the homeless.
Mother New York's clients currently include Target, Baileys, JW Marriott, Microsoft and Tanqueray, among others. Earlier this year, the agency won media attention for a New York out-of-home Mother's Day campaign designed to honor all moms with highly visible billboards and some particularly creative examples of "ambient advertising" such as a sign placed near popular dog-walking spots that read, "I picked up yours, you pick up theirs."