Lara Palmer
Art Director
TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles

I started my career in November of 1988 at an agency called Baker Lovick in Toronto after graduating from the Ontario College of Art. It was a great first job where the focus was on creative and I did the first award winning campaigns of my career getting in the One Show and CA.

I became an Associate Creative Director in 1992 when I moved to Maclaren McCann working on Coke and Nestle. I did a campaign for Coke that ran globally.

I moved to Ogilvy in 1997 and worked on IBM, Ponds and discount retailer, Zellers. I did about 20 Zellers commercials and really learned a lot about producing television.

In 2000 I moved to Leo Burnett to work for my former partner Judy John. I produced a lot of work for the one year that I worked there. Most memorable was a campaign for Five Alive that became a cultural success and increased their business 35%. The campaign we developed is still running 6 years later. 

At the end of 2000 my husband and I decided that we had to go live by the mountains. So I quit my job at Leo, sold our house put our stuff in storage, did a five-month snowboarding trip down the west coast and landed in Vancouver in May of 2001 jobless. 

I landed a 3 month freelancing gig at Palmer Jarvis DDB that turned into an offer to work there as an Art Director. The offer was a lot less than I was making in Toronto but the creative opportunities were there and I could go snowboarding every weekend. I took it and shortly after was promoted to Associate Creative Director and won the most awards of my career becoming one of Canada’s most awarded Art Directors. Winning a Gold Lion, 3 One Show Pencils and judging the Young Guns Awards in Sydney Australia, were some of the highlights.

Despite being very happy working for Canada’s dream team in 2005 my husband and I decided that we needed to go live by the ocean & Hollywood, as my husband is a stand-up comic. I got a job offer as an Art Director at TBWA/Chiat/Day in L.A. to work on Playstation, so we moved to Marina Del Rey California in January 2006. So that’s where I’m at right now…checking the surf report.