Campaign speaks with Lucio Ribeiro and TBWA’s Kimberlee Wells on their AI talent investment and how it will bridge the tech and creativity gap to drive sharper brand outcomes.
May 13 2025
Lucio Ribeiro has been named TBWA’s first-ever chief AI and innovation officer, making it the first creative agency in Australia to elevate AI leadership to the C-suite. Ribeiro will oversee both internal and client-facing AI initiatives and drive the scaling of AI capabilities across the agency.
The role, Australian in focus and reports to Melbourne and Adelaide chief executive Kimberlee Wells, launches from Melbourne—home to TBWA’s recent account wins, including the Australian Defence Force Recruiting.
A prominent figure in AI and digital innovation, Ribeiro is recognised for his expertise in applying AI to marketing, media, and business strategy. He has held senior roles at Optus and Seven, where he most recently served as director of digital marketing and innovation. He has also consulted for global brands, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Mondelez, and Goldman Sachs, and lectures on AI, digital marketing, and business at RMIT and Deakin universities.
This latest appointment comes amid a series of senior leadership hires at the shop’s AU offices. Last month, TBWA Sydney announced Matt Keon as chief creative officer, following February appointments of Michael Hogg as chief strategy officer and Elektra O’Malley as managing director.
In an exclusive interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific, Ribeiro and Kimberlee Wells, CEO of TBWA Melbourne and global sustainability lead, discussed the creation of the role, its scope, and how agencies can bridge the gap between AI and creativity.
Q) Explain the thought process behind creating this role.
Kimberlee Wells: The creation of this role reflects the core of our Disruption philosophy. While AI is often perceived as novelty or confined within innovation labs, our approach was different, we wanted AI to be embedded into the heart of the agency as a driver of how we can expand our thinking, create, and find intelligent growth.
AI is a huge opportunity for the business, and we’ve been playing and experimenting with the toolset for the past few years, but now we’re accelerating, putting the right skills in the right places to take advantage of what the technology can do.
To achieve our ambition, we required dedicated leadership who could turn AI into a practical commercial advantage, and created a role that fuses creativity, data, performance, and machine intelligence into a single strategic function.
What specific challenges, gaps, or opportunities is the chief AI and innovation Officer position designed to address?
Kimberlee Wells: This role exists to solve a very real disconnect between the hype around AI and the hard work of embedding it meaningfully into creative, strategic, and commercial operations. Lucio shared during our many conversations “AI is not an autopilot. It’s a co-pilot.”
The real opportunity isn’t to automate ideas, but to augment how we arrive at them, build on them and make them more accountable.
And for us the challenge is twofold: The first is helping all our creative talent understand what AI can unlock without diluting originality. And second, bring structure and governance to what has been, until now, a fragmented and often experimental space.
Lucio’s remit is to do both; to scale capability while protecting the craft.
He also touches on an important cultural gap: the lack of crossover between the AI/tech world and creative industries. There’s enormous potential in connecting those domains bringing rigour to creativity and imagination to technology.
That’s the space this role is designed to occupy, and why it’s critical to TBWA’s ambition to lead in the next era of brand building.
For our clients, Lucio’s priority is listening. He’s sat on the other side and has immense empathy for all the challenges CMO’s have on their plate. Understanding where brands are on their AI journey and helping them navigate the hype with clarity and purpose is a key part of Lucio’s remit.
How does this align with the agency’s long-term goals?
Kimberlee Wells: This role is a strategic investment in the future of creativity. TBWA’s long-term ambition as The Disruption Company is to build an agency that defines the future, to continue to find the whitespace for our clients. Embedding AI at the core of our business is central to that mission.
Lucio Ribeiro’s appointment accelerates our shift from experimentation and playing with the toolset to transformation. As shared earlier; AI is a co-pilot, not a shortcut, but a force multiplier for creative thinking, smarter systems, and sharper outcomes. His role bridges tech and creativity, helping us scale capability, evolve our model, and future-proof the way we deliver value to clients.
It’s about building a modern, intelligent agency that leads with creativity and operates with precision.
How will success be evaluated, and what immediate priorities will he focus on to drive impact for both TBWA and its clients?
Kimberlee Wells: Lucio’s success will be measured not just by the adoption of AI tools, but by how effectively they drive creative quality, operational efficiency, and commercial impact. It’s about building sustainable value; scalable applications that enhance client outcomes and agency performance, beyond experimentation.
In the immediate term, his priorities are clear: embed AI capabilities into the core of the business, upskill teams across departments, and establish governance frameworks to ensure AI is used responsibly, creatively, and commercially. Ribeiro’s remit spans everything from intelligent automation and performance optimisation to identifying new business models powered by AI.
He’ll also focus on demystifying AI, ensuring our team and our clients see AI not as a threat or a shortcut to creativity, but as a tool to amplify it. Early wins will come from integrating AI into live client work, proving its impact through smarter insights, faster workflows, and more adaptive creative solutions.
Ultimately, success will be defined by the ability to deliver work that is more original, more efficient, and more effective. Work that continues to reflect our agency philosophy to break conventions and find growth for both clients and TBWA.
What does an AI officer, a trend that is increasingly being seen across agencies, bring to the table that digital and innovation heads were lacking?
Lucio Ribeiro: I see this role as an evolution. Digital and innovation leaders did incredible work bringing new tools, thoughts and platforms into agencies. However, a Chief AI & Innovation Officer is about orchestrating those tools with creative intelligence. It’s about making sure our top creative talent has the right data, the best AI models, and the most secure environment to create standout work. We’re not just talking about disruption—we’re designing it, scaling it, and securing it for our clients.
What are the biggest misconceptions about AI in the creative industry today?
Lucio Ribeiro: First, that AI is an instant creativity machine. It’s not. Great creative still comes from great minds—AI just gives them more speed, scale, and options. Second, that AI is a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s only as good as the data, the strategy, and the talent guiding it. In its current state it is a co-pilot not an autopilot. Third, that ethics is a “later” problem—ignore that, and you’re one bad decision away from a brand crisis.
What big AI related changes do you foresee in the creative industry over the next two years?
Lucio Ribeiro: The real shift is pragmatism. Budgets once sunk into production muscle can move into creative intelligence because of AI. Agencies that marry governance with experimentation and creativity will win; those chasing shiny demos will burn out. The big winners will be those who master three things: custom data strategies, governance and creative intelligence. It’s beyond flashy demos—it’s about building smarter systems that feed from disruptive creative thinking. That’s exactly what TBWA is doing—embedding a custom creative intelligence layer for our clients. TBWA is designing AI that is ethical, commercially sensible and highly creative – This gives enormous power to impact the business of our clients
Do you expect this move to inspire other agencies to follow suit?
Lucio Ribeiro: I hope it does. Creativity is the fuel for both innovation and AI. There are brilliant people in the AI and tech world who could benefit from more creative thinking—and creative agencies that could benefit from better governance and smarter commercial models. I’d love to see more agencies make this move, bringing more creative disruption
Lucio, with your extensive background in digital innovation and consulting for global brands, what excites you most about this role?
Lucio Ribeiro: Three things. Disruption, the stability of the business and creativity.
AI isn’t unlocking creativity—it’s exposing who has it.
Joining TBWA, the most creative and disruptive agency in the world, isn’t something that comes around every day. I’ve always lived at the intersection of technology and marketing, and now I get to bring that experience to a place where disruption is in the operating model.
If AI is a facilitator, not a prophet, at TBWA I get the range and the speed. I get to plug global innovation into local impact, helping clients move faster, or slow, depending on where they are. I’ve spent my career on the edge of technology and marketing, and this role lets me take everything I’ve learned and plug it into a place where disruption is the norm.
How will your expertise help TBWA harness AI to redefine intelligent growth and creative disruption for its clients?
Lucio Ribeiro: I’m bringing a playbook that combines commercial reality, education, technology, and ethical intelligence. We’re going to democratise AI knowledge internally and to our clients, so everyone understands how to use it, build safe-to-fail sandboxes for creative teams, and develop local custom tools based on our global agreements that solve real client problems. Most importantly, I’m making sure AI is a creative ally, not a creativity killer. It’s about better ideas, faster results, and stronger client relationships. We won’t do the same things just faster.
Anything else you want to add?
Lucio Ribeiro: Just that I’m very excited!
This story first appeared on Campaign Asia-Pacific.
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