Indie agency 22squared has hired Mara Evans and Bowen Mendelson as VPs and creative directors, leading creative on the SunTrust and Southeast Toyota accounts, respectively. Evans comes directly from Spanx where she was sr. consultant and creative director, and Mendelson from Leo Burnett in Chicago where he was VP/creative director. Both roles are new positions at 22squared which have them reporting directly to chief creative officer Matt O’Rourke, who joined the agency in September from Grey New York.

Evans learned the craft of broadcast and video from Spike Lee at SpikeDDB while creating the “NBA on TNT” promos with Sacha Baron Cohen. She then worked at Anomaly NY for clients Converse and Coke. She was critical in winning the IKEA account while at Ogilvy & Mather New York, and part of the team who pitched and won Bank of America for WPP agency Young & Rubicam New York in 2011. She moved to Los Angeles to work for Crispin, Porter + Bogusky for client Old Navy. As global brand creative director for TOMS in 2015, she created a new brand platform which refocused on its core social movement. Evans and her husband filmed the documentary Wake Up which premiered at SXSW in 2009 and was introduced by Sting at Tribeca in 2010.

O’Rourke stated, “Mara is a person who is deeply fulfilled by introducing new ideas and understandings to the world. It’s when she is at her happiest. I’m confident she’ll have a profound effect not just on our creative product, but also on our view of the world.”

Highlights of Mendelson’s career include leading the Coke account at FitzCo in Atlanta where he helped debuted the “1,000 names celebration” campaign, which included writing over 1000 songs dedicated to actual names that appeared on bottles of Coke. He also created the Delta Middle Seat Lounge initiative. At Ogilvy he was a creative director on Kimberly-Clark, creating a Pandora station initiative encouraging people to make babies. Mendelson worked on the client-side as copywriter at Uber and has won creative awards including Cannes Lions, One Show, D&AD pencils and Best-In-Show at Radio Mercury.

O’Rourke related, “Bowen sees the world through a thick lens of empathy. He thinks about how people’s experiences affect their understanding of the world, and he uses that understanding to connect with them on a deeper, more meaningful level. Bowen is a storyteller. And his life experience has given him an emotional understanding of the world that makes him a perfect fit for 22squared.”