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Who

Bob Scarpelli is the worldwide chairman and chief creative officer at the Omnicom-controlled ad agency DDB Worldwide, where he works alongside the firm's CEO Chuck Brymer.

Backstory

Scarpelli started out as a copywriter at Needham Harper in 1977 and was named the firm's creative director in 1980. In 1986, the firm merged with DDB and Scarpelli took over as creative director of the combined company, moving up to chief creative officer at DDB Chicago eight years later. For much of the 1980s and '90s, DDB Chicago served as the firm's creative power base and Scarpelli crafted campaigns for a long list of big clients based in the Windy City, including McDonald's and Anheuser-Busch. But in 2005, Scarpelli departed Chicago and moved to New York after he was tapped to serve as DDB Worldwide's chief creative officer; a year later he was elevated to chairman shortly after Omnicom CEO John Wren named Chuck Brymer DDB's CEO. Today Scarpelli and Brymer tend to a roster of blue chip clients like Johnson & Johnson, Anheuser-Busch, Clorox, and Volkswagen.

Of note

Known for his talents crafting beer ads and multi-million dollar Superbowl spots, Scarpelli's tenure at DDB in the 1980s and '90s earned him plenty of buzz and countless awards: It was while he was overseeing the Chicago office that DDB created some of Budweiser's most famous campaigns, including Spuds McKenzie, "Gimme a Light," the Bud Frogs, the Bud Bowl, and perhaps most famously, the contagious "Whassup" campaign, which won the Grand Prix and Grand Clio in 2000 and spawned a cultural meme. (More recently, Scarpelli was responsible for Bud's popular "Real Men of Genius" campaign.) The last few years, though, haven't been nearly as successful. Longtime client McDonalds went with another agency to unveil its "I'm Lovin' It" campaign a few years ago; DDB's big digital campaign for Bud.tv turned out to be a costly and embarrassing debacle. And Scarpelli's move to New York resulted in a good deal of upheaval at DDB Chicago with the agency losing two major accounts, JC Penney and Home Depot.

Pet cause

Scarpelli is on the board of directors at Virginia Commonwealth University's AdCenter along with other advertising potentates like Bob Greenberg, Paul Lavoie, Jon Kamen, and David Verklin.

Personal

He and his wife, Julie, live in Blackwood, NJ.