Creative agency Red Tettemer O’Connell + Partners (RTO+P) has promoted longtime executive creative director and partner Steve O’Connell to co-chief creative officer. He will share the role with the agency’s founder Steve Red, who has served as CCO and president for more than two decades. This appointment comes alongside another senior promotion; RTO+P veteran Todd Taylor will fill O’Connell’s role as the new ECD, a move up from his SVP, group creative director post. Together, the trio will lead the agency’s growing creative team, continuing to spearhead innovative, progressive campaigns for clients including Dietz & Watson, Keurig, Dr. Pepper, Reyka Vodka and Craftsman.
VP, creative director Ari Garber and creative director Chris Plehal have also been promoted to group creative directors on the heels of Taylor’s elevation. These senior promotions come at a time of noteworthy growth for the agency. RTO+P has brought on several new clients and projects this past year, including Sierra, A TJX Company, Nic + Zoe, Tullamore Dew, and Chipotle. As a result, the agency has needed to build out teams across disciplines through several new hires.
Over the last few weeks, RTO+P has recruited talent from top shops to help round out its production, creative, and account management teams, including:
–Guy Helson as executive integrated producer. He joins RTO+P from R/GA, where he produced video content for brands including Nike, Mercedes, and Pepsi.
–Colin Smith as a sr. copywriter from London based agency, DARE.
–Christine Benner as experience producer from creative agency 160over90.
–And Christina Castaldo, as the agency’s newest group account director. In her previous role at Anomaly, she led accounts including Budweiser, NBC Sports, and Universal Kids.
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More