TOYGAR BAZARKAYA

Toygar was born in Turkey, grew up in Germany and moved to New York. In Germany he led BBDO to become the country’s most awarded network in Cannes in 2008. Later he joined BBDO New York for 6 years running brands like Visa, Gillette, Campbell’s, HP, The American Red Cross and Major League Baseball.

In 2015 he joined Havas as CCO for the Americas and worked hand-in-hand with media, data analytics and the AI capabilities of the IBM team. He believes in the power collaboration of all disciplines in the service of great ideas.

It is this belief that made him the Chief Creative Officer of We Are Unlimited, a bespoke DDB/Omnicom agency model that unites all disciplines under one roof and one leadership. The agency was designed to understand human insights more deeply and deliver creative excellence on all touch points for McDonald’s.

In 2019 he became a partner and Chief Creative Officer of Optimist, Campaign’s Brand Experience Agency of the Year. He was overseeing offices across the US and Europe and pushing the boundaries of brand experience in digital, virtual and physical expressions. Today he is the Chief Creative Officer at 22 Squared an independent, fully integrated, all employee owned creative agency.

Over the last years he has won 31 Lions for 15 brands in 12 different categories. It’s the result of a simple belief, “Why not make it great while you’re at it? It’s definitely more fun and more effective.”

In 2015 he was a member of the Cannes jury, in 2016 he made Adweek’s Creative 100 and in 2017 he was the president at D&AD for the craft category and the president of the Film category at the London International Awards. In 2018 Campaign selected him for the Digital 40 over 40 list. He judged the Clio Awards multiple time, as recent as 2024 in the social jury. But most importantly he knows that the best is yet to come.