Gary Tobey Steps Down After 30 Years at Haworth

After three a long time main Haworth Advertising + Media, longtime chair and proprietor Gary Tobey is stepping down from the company he remodeled into one in every of retail advertising and marketing’s most influential independents.

Haworth CEO Andrea Luhtanen, who has spent practically 30 years with the corporate, will succeed Tobey and add chairman to her title.

Primarily based in Minneapolis, Haworth was based in 1970 and have become recognized for its decades-long relationship with Goal. WPP’s GroupM acquired a 49% stake in Haworth in 2014, and the retailer moved its media account to the holding firm shortly after.

Luhtanen joined the corporate within the mid-Nineties, holding roles together with vp of selling providers, evp and basic supervisor, and president earlier than turning into CEO in 2023. She helped lead Haworth’s transition to an employee-owned construction and later its partnership with WPP.

Tobey, who purchased Haworth within the mid-Nineties from founder Mary Haworth, advanced the enterprise from a regional media store right into a full-service advertising and marketing companion. As he steps away from day-to-day management, he plans to give attention to consulting and board advisory work throughout the retail, client, leisure and philanthropic sectors.

“The entire business has modified so much,” Tobey informed ADWEEK. “It’s simply time for me to do consulting and do board work.”

From Media Purchaser to Model Builder

Below Tobey’s management, Haworth helped form the fashionable picture of big-box retail via work for shoppers together with Goal, Walmart, Beats Electronics, Ben & Jerry’s, Dick’s Sporting Items, and the Academy of Movement Image Arts & Sciences.

Tobey additionally led the corporate’s transition into an worker inventory possession plan (ESOP) roughly 16 years in the past to provide workers a monetary stake within the company’s success.

“I believed it’d be an effective way to have the workers be house owners of the corporate and be capable to make some cash once they go away,” Tobey mentioned, including giving fairness led the group to “actually care concerning the firm’s efficiency.”

Tobey’s affect is robust on trendy retail branding—most notably Goal’s transformation within the 2000s from low cost chain to design-driven cultural model. Haworth’s work helped form Goal’s popularity for inventive partnerships and leisure tie-ins, together with Tony Bennett: An American Basic, the 2006 NBC particular celebrating Bennett’s eightieth birthday.

Produced in collaboration with director Rob Marshall and that includes Barbra Streisand, Christina Aguilera and Michael Bublé, the mission gained seven Emmys and have become emblematic of Goal’s cultural advertising and marketing period.