About me
Caitlin is Regional Creative Director, EMEA for Facebook and Instagram. Heading up a multi-award winning team of creative directors, planners, producers and technologists who partner with brands big and small to create ground breaking ideas across Facebook, Instagram, Oculus and Messenger platforms.
Member of the senior leadership team for Facebook across the EMEA region, and the Global Creative Shop leadership team.
Originally from Australia, she became ECD of Proximity BBDO in 2001. Under her Creative Directorship the agency won over 200 international and national awards and was one of the first to transition into a digital agency, creating work for P&G, VW, SHELL, J&J, Lloyds, Aviva, TV Licensing, Mondolez, Royal Mail, Orange, Mars, Capital One and RNLI.
In 2013 she joined independent ad agency Karmarama to become the Group Executive Creative Director, with the task of creating an integrated advertising community, capable of delivering media-neutral ideas for their clients including Honda, BBC, Cobra, Air New Zealand and Costa Coffee. In 2016 she became the ECD of Cheil UK to head their integrated creative community with a focus on how brands utilize emerging technologies.
Caitlin is passionate about doing the right thing by consumers and creating brand experiences that start with consumers’ lives not a media channel.
She has sat on, spoke at or was foreman for juries at Cannes, D&AD, Eurobest, Creative Circle, LIA's, DMA's, Drum and Campaign Bigs. She is a member of WACL and speaks regularly on behalf of the industry, particularly on the subject of helping more women stay and thrive in the UK creative industries.
She also owns three of London’s most popular independent café’s: Lantana in Fitzrovia, Shoreditch and London Bridge.
Projects
- Article: Advertising must move from illusion to empowerment(Article originally published by Campaign) Instead of creating fantasy worlds, advertising should work to improve real life, writes Cheil London's executive creative director. With Cannes Lions 2016 behind us, many in the industry will be ruminating on the lessons to be learned. But, in my view, this year’s Cannes Film Festival – that slightly more glamorous annual awards event that precedes our own at the Palais – had just as much to offer those wanting to learn about how to engage an audienc
- Article: Why being 'bored of diversity' is not good enough: a response to Justin Tindall(Article originally published by Campaign) Dear Justin, I get it. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. I get that you want to return to the "good old days" which were such a happy time for you. But as a member of Wacl and a fellow creative leader, I’m asking you instead to see diversity not as a threat to good creative work, but as a way to get better work out there. Let’s imagine. You’re a young boy. You have a love and talent for design, storytelling and using your imagination to create something out of nothing. You want a job where you get to do it all the time. It’s about what’s in your head – not your body – so you have no concerns about doing something that seemingly has nothing to do with gender or the colour of your skin. So you enter the advertising world. Your boss is a woman, the industry press is full of women. The creative department has make-up tables, everyone wears high heels and talks about having "group periods". Every meeting you go to is 80% women. That’s OK – you’re all here because you have the same love of ideas. Doesn’t matter that the place screams "This is for women only!" Midway through your career, you’ve yet to have a male boss. Your clients love you and you’re told you’re valued by the agency, but you’re keen to become a creative director. However, you don’t look the part. Shouldn’t matter – your work will speak for itself, surely? The headhunters tell you all the agencies want a "rock chick". Someone who exudes what sounds to you like very female attributes, none of which you have. You go for interviews and again, you’re yet to meet another bloke. The ECD is a woman, the other candidates women, and the people you’d be managing if you got the job are also mainly women. When you get the job, there are mutterings it was to tick a diversity box, not because of your ability. Every time you walk into a room of industry creative leaders, there are 11 of you surrounded by 89 women. When you’re invited to judge, there are usually two blokes in a room with 10 to 12 women. When you stand at the urinal on your own during a judging break, the women powdering their noses and having a chat in the ladies decide what the best work is and which girls coming up through the ranks remind them of them when they were looking for a step up. The work awarded is for tampons, shampoo and fashion. You feel it’s unfair a group of women picked work appealing directly to them. But to complain would look like you can’t hack it. You want to be given a break because you know you’re good and you love what you do. But then you read in Campaign that a well-known chief creative officer at one of the biggest agencies is frankly bored by you trying to make it. The message is clear. You’re not wanted. She’s a gatekeeper and is irritated that she’s being made to even pay you attention, let alone help you or make sure you feel comfortable. She says having you here makes the work worse. You give up. Let’s stop imagining. Justin, you’re in a position of privilege. You’re an industry leader and when you say you’re bored with diversity and make it binary with talent, you make every young female and BAME creative feel they will not be taken seriously, that the industry doesn't want them, and if they get given a job, it’s to tick a diversity box and not because of their ability. Please stop being bored, wake the fuck up and do what’s fair and right for every young creative who is female or from a different background to you. Not because it ticks a diversity box – but because it will make the work that we all love better too.
Projects credited in
- This International Women’s Day, meet the 200 Women Redefining the Creative Industry in 2018Discover our 2020 list here This International Women's Day, we asked influential icons to nominate 10 trailblazing women who they believe are redefining the creator landscape. The result? A unique and incredible list of 200 trailblazing women breaking barriers and inspiring change! Only 36% of jobs in the creative sector are currently filled by women. At the top of the tree there’s an even bigger problem - women make up only 11% of Creative Directors. In an attempt to change this, our month-lo165