Lea Ladera

Lea is a Group Creative Director. Clients include: Henkel's Detergents, Unilever & Pepsi's Pure Leaf Tea, Breyers Ice Cream, Cotton Incorporated, Royal Canin, Johnson and Johnson's Aveeno, Allergan/AbbVie Aesthetics (Botox and CoolSculpting) and assignments on Miller. Recently, Lea and her team launched successful social media campaigns: For Pure Leaf Tea, an AR Filter was released on International Women's Day to encourage women to create their 'No' Statements for the Effie award winning campaign, 'No Is Beautiful'. That campaign involved Lauren Simmons and many other remarkable women. For Cotton Inc, Lea helped launch Cotton's first successful TikTok campaign that reboots the iconic song, The Fabric of Our Lives, with singer/songwriter, Madilyn Bailey. In 2019, she helped launch Cotton's Rosie Reborn campaign that was picked up by the Today Show, showcasing modern-day Rosie The Riveters.

From 2016-2019:

FREELANCE CLIENTS: Rolex, American Express, Delta, Hilton Hotels, GrubHub, Sodastream, Hyatt, McDonald's, Ally Financial, State Farm, UberEats, Uber, AIG, Xerox, General Mills, Toyota, Target, MetLife, Diet Coke, John Hancock/Manulife, Macy's, Nuveen, Carr's Crackers, Juara Skincare, Starbuck's, Dell, T.J.Maxx, Office Depot Office Max, P&G, Snickers, ShowUp.org, Global Friends for Climate Change

AGENCIES: BBH I WeAreUnlimited I Y&R I Wunderman Thompson I McCann I Mediacom I Digitas Health I Edelman I Big Spaceship I Terri & Sandy I MUH-TAY-ZIK I HOF-FER I Figliulo & Partners I Deloitte's Heat I Argonaut I Mother I Saatchi & Saatchi LA I Martin Agency I Translation I PineRock I Fenton

Lea, with writer, Josh Gold and Antonio Navas worked on Rolex for Wunderman Thompson and VMLY&R. The campaign launched at the Oscars this year.

In 2018, Lea and Josh also worked with VMLY&R's Leslie Sims and Nathalie Brown to help win the pitch for Office Depot Office Max.

At Deloitte's Heat in NY, Lea and writer, Michelle Hirschberg worked with ECD, Evan Slater, to help win the pitch for the John Hancock/Manulife global creative account. In addition, Lea worked at Terri & Sandy Solutions and helped them win a pitch.

For Mother NY, Lea wore multiple hats writing, art directing, and consulting with her Mother team to develop Target's Spring Social Media Influencer Campaign called Happy Together. The campaign starring Zach King, Naomi Davis, Iris Beilin and Jenn Im launched before Easter and Mother's Day this year. The campaign consisted of branded content films and social posts.

At Argonaut, Lea worked with Argonaut's MetLife team to deliver the digital and print components for the new MetLife campaign.

Lea is also an adjunct professor for the University of Texas at Austin and formerly at The School of Visual Arts.

In December 2014, Lea, along with her McCann team won the Nespresso business for North America. She and her team then launched Nespresso's first integrated campaign into the U.S. market with the debut of their brand ambassador, George Clooney. The TV ad featuring Clooney and Danny DeVito became embedded into pop-culture after being parodied on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. This won a Hollywood A-List Award.

She also helped McCann Paris with the global integrated campaign consisting of TV, print, outdoor and digital which launched in 48 countries starring George Clooney and Ian McShane.

In the same year, Fall of 2015, she helped spearhead another unexpected campaign that put Cigna Health Insurance on the map for their biggest season–Open Enrollment. Cigna partnered with ABC and Jimmy Kimmel Live. This campaign was shortlisted at the Cannes Advertising Awards for Creativity this year.

Additionally, Lea and her Verizon team made a big splash in Fall of 2015 with a campaign for Fios' first-ever Custom TV service, an “un” bundling service where you choose only the channels you want, not what you don’t.

At Saatchi & Saatchi, Lea held the Global Creative Director position for the pet care account, Iams. She was lucky enough to work with some irresistible furry friends. She produced a series of animated web content called, “Professor Iamstein,” which helped consumers understand how to take better care of their cats and dogs. She also made a local pet adoption event into something that captured people’s hearts. “Love at First Sight” Portraits at the event increased social shares. “Love Changes Everything” became a series of long-format films that featured engaging real-life stories of how the love of a pet can change the lives of its owners. Lea champions creative work that optimizes the client's existing assets.

In the same year, she also led and won the integrated pitch for the global challenger brand Eukanuba Dog Food and produced a campaign that included TV, print, digital, long and short–format web films which showcased Labradors who lived past their prime. The campaign broke through, with a little help from the lovable canines. Who can resist seeing living proof of the magnificently healthy "100-year" old dogs?

Specializing in Creative Direction, Art Direction, Graphic Design, and Creative Consultation across all media channels.

Lea had the privilege to work with the most amazing people at shops like Mother, DDB, Barton F. Graf 9000, Ogilvy Mather, McGarry Bowen, LBi, Time Warner's TruTV, and Yumi Kim. She worked on clients such as American Express, Lipton, Cotton Inc, Beck's Sapphire, Ragu, Chase, Shiseido, CMT, and Yumi Kim.

At Ogilvy, she was the art director on the campaign that launched the very first installment of American Express' Everyday Card starring comedy-legend, Tina Fey, which garnered lots of buzz and press having launched at the Oscars. To this day the campaign continues.

At DDB, she created Unilever’s, Lipton K-Scopes on Facebook, which introduced the U.S. to Lipton Tea’s first Keurig Cups. The online campaign generated so much traffic that K-cup samples sold out within the first couple of days. In the same year, she also joined forces with Nexus to rally for Cotton Inc. during NY's Fashion Week.

During that time, Lea wrote and co-directed a film for fashion retailer, Yumi Kim, which also aired during Fashion Week.

At JWT Lea worked on clients such as Macy’s, America’s Biggest Department Store. She focused on developing branded content, digital and mobile activation platforms, as well as integrated campaigns involving social media and PR.

She also created, "100 Ways to Make Magic," a highly designed, 100-page how-to book on customer service for Macy’s and produced it in mass scale.

The same year, she launched the program, “Macy's Million Dollar Makeover” as an episodic competitive reality-show that ran entirely on Facebook. It was so successful that TLC picked it up for another season. Lea was the co-producer for the one-hour TLC special hosted by Clinton Kelly and judged by Martha Stewart, Tommy Hilfiger and Marcus Samuelsson.

She also helped produce, “Live at Macy’s” Events featuring mega-watt music artist,Taylor Swift.

At the end of the year, she and her team developed an augmented reality mobile app that drove traffic in stores for the holidays. That campaign along with “Macy’s Backstage Pass” earned Macy’s the award for “The Mobile Marketer of the Year”.

Lastly, Lea helped produce the second iteration of “Smirnoff’s Nightlife Exchange Project” which featured Madge–the Lady Madonna herself. The program had multiple phases starting from the filming of the casting process, to the rehearsals, which then led to the actual competitive event. She took careful consideration and collaborated with Madonna’s choreographers on the set direction, wardrobe and make-up styling. Not an easy feat.

Lea and her partner worked on integrated campaigns for HP and a comedic TV campaign for Comcast. She finally worked my way up to managing a few teams for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Lea created award-winning campaigns for JCPenney and worked on packaged-good brands like Novartis’ Excedrin, P&G’s Tide and General Mills.

She worked diligently to encourage clients like Procter & Gamble and Novartis to do creatively charged, breakthrough work that resonated with consumers. She helped energize and boost sales for JCPenney with smart, stunning work that successfully repositioned the brand in consumer’s eyes. Lea was also instrumental in winning the pitch for the Lego Brand at Saatchi & Saatchi Copenhagen.

Lea's first ad agency was Leo Burnett in Chicago where she gained valuable retail experience. At Leo, she and her partner created award-winning campaigns for several brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, True Value and Delta. For McDonald’s, one campaign that included Britney Spears and the band NSync with Justin Timberlake, was talked about at the Grammy’s. Overall, she gained a tremendous amount of production knowledge while shooting six months out of the year.

Lea started out promoting upcoming movies on a grassroots level in Austin, Texas on behalf of MGM/UA, Columbia TriStar, Castle Rock Entertainment/Time Warner, and helped out on groundbreakings for Planet Hollywood. Getting in front of an audience promoting movies that needed it took some guts, but that experience gave her confidence, not to mention, lots of movie loot.