Slap Global announces new president Lyndsey Corona with a 'President’s Day Sale'

Slap Global, the global creative boutique founded by veteran agency leaders Gerry Graf and Maxi Itzkoff, has appointed former Forsman & Bodenfors New York President Lyndsey Corona as president and partner. And to celebrate, the company is holding a “President’s Day Sale”—offering 25% off any client’s first project.

Corona at the outset will be focused on building new business and expanding the team and operations in New York. 

On deciding to partner with Corona, Graf described her as being “really good at what I’m really bad at,” he said. Equally important, “I was looking for somebody who's on the business side but who is as much in love with making great creative work as I am.” 

In her last role at F&B, Corona helped to bring in multiple new clients, reinvigorated existing relationships and promoted fresh creative thinking across the agency. Prior to that had been chief growth officer at McCann North America, where she was part of an executive team that saw an impressive streak of new business wins and helped launch new practices to help fuel growth. She has worked with clients across major categories, including McDonald’s, Microsoft, Xbox, Puma, Jameson and Kahlua. She’s also held leadership roles at The&Partnership and TBWA\Chiat\Day, with prior stints at McCann that saw her helping to establish San Francisco’s 215 McCann as a boutique spin-off.

Graf and Itzkoff opened Slap Global nearly two years ago as an alternative to the familiar agency model, positioning it as a “creativity-led business accelerator” that aimed to introduce creative business solutions to clients’ problems early on, versus coming into the picture later with a typical ad campaign. Since then, the company has created campaigns for major brands including Netflix, Doritos, AB InBev, Coca-Cola, Under Armour, Gatorade, Dove, Fox Sports and Pernod Ricard. Some of its notable work included a Doritos campaign that embraced Pride all year long through the lens of major holidays, a Netflix “Bridgerton” Samsung campaign that imagined a new product unveiling in the Regency era, and a “Stranger Things” Doritos “Live from the Upside Down” virtual concert.

In her new role, "I'll take the kind of the rigor and the discipline and the ops know-how of big agency experience and think about how to flex that muscle here so that we can get the job done and deliver," Corona said. " At the end of the day, especially with things being so project-based these days, you have to deliver." 

As with her new partners, she believes creativity remains key. “I've always been a believer, as our industry has gone through all of its different twists and turns, that creative is number one, and it’s the surefire way to deliver performance,” she added. Slap Global's model is a “return to what's always been true about advertising. It’s not your data marketing, it’s not your one-to-one banner ad, It’s about lights-out creative that’s going to drive performance.”

Small agency 'spark plug'

Having worked at all sizes of agencies, Corona believes that Slap Global can hold a key role for clients as they come out of the pandemic and prepare for a recession.

“Clients are rethinking their agency relationships, in a way, categorizing them based on service,” she said. “Big, global networks have almost become go-tos for complex coordination, but they’re not billing them for great creative. [For us] it’s not about replacing the big guys, it’s about being the spark plug that you might need to drive insane results or attention very quickly. I think clients are wanting to experiment more, there’s a desire for fresh ideas. I can’t tell you how many big clients I’ve heard say, ‘I’ve got the agency that listens to me, and I need the agency that will push me.’ So it’s about being complementary.”

And for those clients wanting to test the waters, the agency, in true Gerry Graf fashion, is holding its own “President’s Day Sale” to celebrate Corona’s arrival. Slap Global created a QR code for its announcement picture that will take viewers to a coupon that will give any client 25% off their first project. “We’re looking at you Constellation,” the company release said with a wink, as the beverage company has the U.S. rights to the Mexican beer that shares Corona's surname.

Throughout his career, Graf has been known for his unconventional approaches to announcing the arrival of new talent. At his previous agency Barton F. Graf, for example, he enlisted a town crier to ring in the announcement.