Global B2B agency Gyro announced it has hired Kimberly Bates as chief strategy and innovation officer of their New York office, a new role at the company.
Previously executive planning director at Mcgarreybowen, Bates is charged with leading strategy in the New York office along with Managing Director Wendy Lurrie and Executive Creative Director Vito Zarrillo, as well as driving innovation globally.
“Kimberly possesses a unique combination of energy, innovative thinking and experience in all aspects of strategy. She will amplify all of our efforts to create powerful, humanly relevant solutions for our clients,” Lurrie said. “As business evolves and our clients needs evolve with ever-increasing velocity, it is more important than ever that we continue to turbo charge our strategic capabilities throughout our offerings. Kimberly is central to that effort.”
Bates has also held leadership roles at PHD Worldwide, Publicis Kaplan Thaler, Arnell Group and Nielsen. She also has experience as a client-side marketer; previously she ran brand strategy at Time Warner Cable, where she shepherded the company’s first-ever corporate rebranding, and built the first internal communications strategy and planning department from the ground up.
“Companies are going through historical digital transformation into software platforms to deliver their ideas, products, services and experiences. It’s both an exciting and confusing time. Brands are now a sum of not only their beliefs, but also behaviors. Communications have become a fluid stream of real-time interactions at the speed of tech and culture. These interactions need to be more humanly relevant and personalized to have meaningful impact on business decision making today,” Bates said. “That’s why I am thrilled to join an agency that is leading this new ‘business-to-people’ thinking in our industry and around the world.”
