Jason Campbell Joins McGarrah Jessee as Chief Creative Officer

​Jason Campbell has been named chief creative officer at McGarrah Jessee (McJ), bringing one of advertising’s most respected and culturally influential creative leaders to the creative agency as it reaches 30 years of independence.

Jason most recently served as chief creative officer at Translation and UnitedMasters, where over five years he designed and scaled the internal operating system that drove creative output across a roster of more than 20 brands, including the NBA, Beats by Dre, AT&T, Nike, McDonald's, Hulu, WhatsApp, Nike, Diageo, and Meta, cementing the agency's reputation for creative excellence. He oversaw Beats by Dre's 'You Love Me,' the Emmy-nominated, Cannes Lion Titanium-winning campaign that became an industry benchmark and shaped the brand's long-term marketing strategy. He deepened the agency's partnership with the NBA, leading to campaigns like 'Welcome to NBA Lane' winning the 2022 Sports Emmy and earning consistent Sports Emmy nominations year after year. He closed his tenure with a multiyear project with AT&T: building a 5G-powered football helmet with a built-in augmented reality lens that lets Deaf and hard-of-hearing players see their coach's play calls in real time, work that earned the Silver Lion in Innovation for Sports at Cannes Lions. Under his creative leadership, Translation earned a spot on Ad Age's Agency A-List for three consecutive years (2022, 2023, and 2024) and was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in advertising and marketing in 2024.

Before Translation, Jason held leadership roles at Wieden+Kennedy and Goodby Silverstein & Partners, where he worked across global brands including Nike, Airbnb, TurboTax, Impossible Foods, and Verizon. His work has earned him consistent recognition across the industry. He was named a 2023 Adweek Creative 100 honoree and received the 2024 ADCOLOR One Club Creative Award. He has served on juries at The One Show, D&AD, the ADC Annual Awards, the Radio Mercury Awards, and the Film Lions jury at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in 2022. Jason's perspective has been sought by outlets including Ad Age, Adweek, Muse by Clios, Marketing Brew, Marketing Dive, and more.

Jason’s appointment is a defining creative leadership move for McJ, an agency built on craft, independence, and deep client relationships that span decades. He joins CEO Britton Upham, chief strategy officer Jen Hruska, and chief technology officer Bill Urciuoli as McJ builds on its integrated model across creative, strategy, media buying, and data science.

For Jason, McJ offered a distinct opportunity: a fiercely independent agency where he could impact the work and clients, bring more diversity of thought into the creative culture, and help expand what the agency can do for a broader range of brands both at a regional and national level.

“The values Mark [McGarrah] and Bryan [Jessee] built this place on still matter. Craft matters. Humanity matters. Independence matters. My job is to help bring more people, more perspectives and more urgency into that, so the work can meet the world the way it is now. McJ has always understood people in a very human way, and I think there’s a huge opportunity to take that further. I remember seeing McJ’s work in the One Show annuals back in school and thinking how good it was. I wanted my next move to be a place with real potential for scale, where I could apply what I’ve learned about running creative businesses and developing a system for diverse talent, alongside leaders I feel philosophically in sync with,” said Jason.

That balance - honouring McJ’s foundation while evolving both the work and the way it gets made - will define Jason’s role as CCO.

“At McJ, we believe in culture adds, not culture fits. People who value us for who we are, yes, but who also challenge our biases, broaden our perspective and help evolve who we become,” said Britton. “I saw that in Jason instantly. I was drawn to his intentionality, clarity, candor and thoughtfulness. There was a real alignment in values — respect for people, for craft and for doing things the right way. From there, it became all about possibility. Where we could take this thing. What we could unlock. And how we might create impact together. That part has been incredibly fun for all of us.”

Jason’s work has consistently combined capturing attention and revealing the deeper human truths that make people feel seen, understood, and moved. It's the same instinct that has driven McJ for decades which has long built brands around the irrational ways people care: the rituals, attachments, and everyday truths that make a brand matter more than logic alone can explain.

After three decades of cultivating fanaticism for brands like YETI, Shiner, Brooks Running, and Fender Guitars, McGarrah Jessee is doubling down on what it does best: building brands people care too much about. Utilizing the agency’s 'UNBOUND' policy which enables remote work, the independent creative company is looking to accelerate creativity through diversity of talent and geography, building nationwide ‘hubs’ that intentionally move beyond Austin, Texas. Jason, who is based in Los Angeles, is himself an example of this expansion, signalling that the agency, while born in Austin, is actively building the national footprint to continue to meet clients where they physically are and compete at the scale the work demands.