TRAVERSE32, the long-form leisure manufacturing studio a part of IPG Mediabrands, will transfer below inventive community McCann. As a part of the transition, TRAVERSE32 world president Brendan Gaul will be a part of McCann as its first world chief leisure officer.
Within the new function, Gaul will proceed to run TRAVERSE32 whereas main leisure property growth at McCann. The transfer goals to make it simple for McCann’s shoppers to increase their model platforms into long-form, Hollywood-style storytelling, whereas retaining brand-owned IP nearer to inventive groups with the infrastructure to package deal, distribute, and defend it.
“The function is to take the work that’s being developed by our inventive groups inside McCann and say, ‘is there additionally an leisure concept there?’” Gaul stated.
TRAVERSE32’s workforce of six will be a part of McCann as a devoted, on-demand useful resource for its world inventive groups trying to prolong consumer work into leisure.
“Typically there’s a quick that is available in and the consumer says, ‘I wish to make a movie.’ Now now we have the precise experience inside McCann to assist deal with that problem collectively,” Gaul stated.
Gaul added that McCann “has a protracted historical past of making issues in tradition that transcend promoting,” from A Charlie Brown Christmas for Coca-Cola to the company’s look within the closing episode of Mad Males. TRAVERSE32’s work consists of Pricey Santa, a documentary and sequence for the U.S. Postal Service; 5B, a documentary about an AIDS ward for Johnson & Johnson; and The Closing Copy of Ilon Specht for L’Oréal Paris, in regards to the copywriter who coined the model’s well-known “As a result of I’m Value It” tagline, which received the 2025 Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Movie.
Manufacturers, Meet Hollywood
Gaul stated long-form leisure can “transfer a few of the hardest to maneuver metrics” for manufacturers. He pointed to Pricey Santa for the USPS, which was examined in a number of codecs—a trailer, a 30-minute TV episode, and a 90-minute movie—and persistently confirmed that “the longer the viewers stays with the work, the extra the metrics transfer in favor of the model.”
Such tasks not solely have interaction audiences in a brand new method, but in addition “construct a unique sort of partnership with essentially the most senior of brand name shoppers,” Gaul stated.
For Gaul, the brand new function marks a return to McCann, the place he started his profession 22 years in the past as an artwork director. He has since constructed his profession on creating Hollywood-style leisure for main manufacturers like L’Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, and the USPS.
“Now there’s nearly a calling from essentially the most senior model entrepreneurs which are actually in search of that sort of work,” he stated.
Gaul’s new function comes after McCann Worldgroup restructured in Might below world CEO Daryl Lee to serve an increase in venture work and scale back silos throughout its community.
The reshuffling of TRAVERSE32 below McCann additionally comes as IPG prepares to be acquired by Omnicom; the deal is predicted to clear remaining regulatory hurdles this fall.
