Jim "Wegs" Wegerbauer Joins 9thWonder as Partner

Jim “Wegs” Wegerbauer, an advertising veteran with exceptional experience across advertising disciplines, has joined the multinational start-up agency 9thWonder as partner and global planning lead. The move expands leadership for the new agency, which launched in October with seven offices on three continents, 250 people and a focus on bringing to life the magic of everyday brands.

Wegs has managed $200 million accounts, led two creative departments and multiple planning departments and pioneered multicultural marketing for big brands like AT&T and Chevrolet. He made the Houston Rockets the top marketing organization in the NBA, helped Nationwide crack the Fortune 500 and led strategy for such notable brands as Budweiser, Southwest Airlines, Honda, Burger King and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.

Wegs joins 9thWonder from GSD&M, where he was vice president/group strategy director. Prior to that, he was chief idea officer at Dieste, brand management director at The Richards Group, vice president/planning and business development at TM Advertising, and director of creativity and planning for the Houston Rockets. He wrote 1 + 1 = 3: Changing the Equation with the Booming Hispanic Market and founded Provoke Weekly, a multicultural newspaper that’s been published for five years running.

“Wegs brings extraordinary experience to support the extraordinary promise we’re making to clients – that we’ll bring the full spectrum of expertise to bear on advancing their businesses by celebrating the amazing role their products play in people’s lives,” said Jose Lozano, CEO of 9thWonder. “In bringing people from every discipline onto all our accounts, we’re actually doing the kind of multidisciplinary work that gets promised but seldom delivered. Wegs not only thinks across disciplines, he has experience in them all working on a vast range of businesses confronting the challenge of sameness. He will help us accelerate the collaboration at the core of our model.”

Wegs wasn’t looking to do more than provide counsel when a mutual friend connected him with Lozano about the new agency. But after three hours of conversation, he heard a promise he couldn’t pass up. “9thWonder solves a lot of problems that have plagued advertising for 20 years and left clients paying for an empty promise of seamless teams and solutions,” he said. “It’s a network that actually works, because it’s a true partnership. No way was I going to pass up that chance, and I can already see that we’re delivering on what we’re selling.”

As partner and global planning lead, Wegs will help develop unifying approaches for 9thWonder clients. He will be instrumental in pulling in the agency’s specialties (marketing, media, content, etc.) to develop solutions centered around client challenges. And, his intimate experience with multicultural consumer segments will help guide client consumer marketing strategies to be “cultural-first” – which is critical in today’s changing consumer landscape. He will support both the agency’s existing accounts – which include Stage Stores, Natrol, Bosley, Public Storage, Phillips 66, Direct Energy Home Services, and the American Heart Association – and new business development efforts.

9thWonder is a strategic marketing, media and idea company dedicated to shining a light on the products and services we use every day and raising them to a level of wonder in their respective worlds. The agency operates from offices in Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Buenos Aires, and Nha Trang, Vietnam.