Trefor Thomas joins digital agency Tug as global chief

Trefor “Tom” Thomas, who left Lida at the beginning of this year to “take his creative path in a new direction”, has found that all roads lead to the digital performance market by joining marketing agency Tug in the role of global chief creative officer.
Reporting into Tug founder and CEO Nick Beck, Thomas will be responsible for expanding the creative discipline in each of the agency’s offices worldwide, ensuring the sharpest creative thinking, fuelled by what Tug claims are “sophisticated data and insights across media opportunities”, delivered to clients globally.
With over 20 years of creative director roles, Thomas has held senior positions in companies such as SapientNitro, RMG Connect, and Saatchi & Saatchi.
During his extensive career working with clients such as Sony, HSBC, TUI, Mercedes Benz, P&G and SKY, Thomas has won over 60 national and international awards, including three gold Lions.
Beck, who founded Tug in 2006 after roles at Ogilvy Interactive and Montana Steele Strategic Marketing, said: “At Tug, we have more than doubled our clients year-on-year, expanded our team in the UK and have ambitious plans to ensure we continue to deliver better results across all channels for our clients.
“Tom has a wealth of experience as a creative director and as a seasoned CCO. More importantly, he shares our vision and desire to make the most of creativity across all channels. Where some agencies are struggling to show their value to clients, we are strengthening our offering based around cut-through creativity and bespoke technology solutions, paired with the very best channel agnostic media planning and buying.”
Thomas added: “It is an incredibly exciting time to be joining an agency that has some seriously talented people who truly believe in joining the forces of media, tech and creative. I believe that very few agencies have managed to maximise data from a media perspective and get it to work successfully with the creative. Tug has successfully done this, and this was one of the main reasons why it is such a great fit for me.”