Former Ogilvy Leader to Head Uncommon’s US CX Push

​Uncommon is strengthening its fully integrated US offering by hiring Kris Gibbons as the creative studio’s first president of customer experience.

As the New York studio grows, so too do client needs. Kris thinks the new position will help clients take creative ideas into places where people can build relationships with them, becoming "what they use, join, share, buy into, and return to".

And according to him, there’s no better time for this role to begin. “The market has changed,” says Kris. “People don’t experience brands in neat channels anymore; they move through communities, platforms, services, content, commerce and culture all at once.”

Connecting brand belief to real behaviour requires the right senior leadership to be steering the ship. “Globally, Uncommon's customer experience practice has been growing, and the US is a major opportunity to build on that momentum by bringing experience closer to the creative and design ambition from the start,” Kris explains.

“The ambition is simple: ideas that hold their shape wherever people meet the brand.”

Kris says Uncommon’s belief system and knack for making culture is what attracted him to the studio. “Uncommon believes creativity can move culture and business, and the studio model is built to make that real.”

He adds, “There is pace, taste and craft here. Ideas do not stay theoretical.... For clients, that matters. They need creative partners who can get to the real problem quickly and make creativity work harder in the world.”

Kris sees the biggest opportunity for brands right now as “grip”; he wants to help enable ideas that stick. “Attention is fractured, loyalty is fragile,” he notes, asserting that the room for growth is in ideas which give brands a real role in people’s lives, changing behaviours and deepening relationships. “That's where creativity becomes a business advantage.”

It’s for this reason that Kris’ first priority is “getting into it” with brands – “And that started on day one", he says. The team at Uncommon is already working with current clients and building new relationships where this offering can have a quick impact, with whispers of some exciting new wins to be disclosed soon.

“So the focus is the work,” says Kris simply. “Showing how the studio model moves, proving where brand-led customer experience can create growth, and building the offer through real client proof points.”

Kris is no stranger to this work. He joins from Ogilvy, where he led Verizon’s consumer business, and helped reshape the way the brand competes, communicates and grows across each touchpoint.

Previously at R\GA, Kris led Samsung Global, where he developed the operating model and brand platform that evolved the business from product-led launches to the more life-style-driven brand work it does today.

Before all this, at VSA Partners, he spent a decade leading IBM’s global transformation, building all things brand, design, sales enablement and employee engagement across over 170 markets.

Uncommon’s founding CX partner, Jonathan Goodman, says, “At Uncommon, we see experience as a critical expression of the brand itself. Kris brings a rare combination of creative, business and operational thinking.”

He adds, “As clients increasingly look for integrated partners who can connect brand building with customer engagement, he will play a critical role in shaping the next stage of our US offering.”

It’s a role hinging on the marriage of deep-rooted core beliefs between Kris and the studio. “Experience is where the brand becomes true,” he says.

Uncommon CX has experienced impressive momentum over the past year, growing 41% in 2025 as brands seek out a more integrated method of building customer relationships.

Right now, Kris says every day is different, but the job itself is consistent. He defines it simply: “[to] help clients find where creativity can change the outcome.”

And at Uncommon, he believes the power of the studio model is that creative ambition, cultural relevance and business impact are all in the room from the start. “We always aim to bring our clients and our people together around the right problem, raise the ambition in the room, and create the conditions for creativity to do what it does best: move people and move the business.”