Christopher Owens Email & Phone Number

Christopher is a strategist-educator-drummer-and-mixed-media-storyteller who loves hyphens. He's a midwesterner by birth, raised near Columbus, Ohio, where he dreamt of becoming a cartoonist, architect, and drummer (in that order.) His desire to live and learn around creative misfits drew him to the University of North Texas in Denton, where he earned a BFA in Language and Communications. After college, he hit the road playing drums in an award-winning third-wave two-tone ska band called The Grown-Ups. Who wouldn't? After four memorable years with the band, he sold out and entered the dragon of advertising. In the late '90s, he cut his teeth at Gleason/Calise on Web 1.0 brands before being accepted into the renowned Miami Ad School for their second annual Account Planning Boot Camp. He was trained by the world's premier account planners and graduated top of his class.Since joining independent agency The Richards Group in 2000 (re-founded in 2021 as TRG), his Effie award-winning strategic guidance has realized the potential of a diverse set of brands: Alfa Romeo, Sub-Zero luxury appliances, Patrón Spirits, The Home Depot, Dr Pepper, 7-Up, GameStop, Paramount Pictures, Metro by T-Mobile, Firehouse Subs, National Vision Inc, Biltmore, Seabourn Cruises, SMU, and The Dallas Morning News to name a few. For five years, Christopher acted as liaison with an independent partner agency in Tokyo, where he oversaw the training of strategists and implementation of a new brand definition capability.In December 2020, Christopher accepted the opportunity to join agency leadership in guiding its re-founding as TRG — an ongoing reimagining of the former Richards Group into a first-of-its-kind nonprofit-owned, people-run creativity collective.In the past 24 years, Christopher has become an over-booked educator with SMU, VCU Brand Center, UT Austin, IAAS, and Ad2 organizations. He has run clinics, participated in mainstage panels, and Head Juror at the 2024 4A’s Jay Chiat Strategy Awards. He's most proud of becoming the first Miami Ad School Strategy Bootcamp grad to be invited back as faculty in 2007. This has been an ongoing 19+ year commitment enabling him to teach virtually worldwide to hundreds of students now practicing in the world's top creative companies.As of Fall 2024, he’s an empty-nester with two creative daughters, both in and out of college. Meanwhile, he still performs with fellow veterans from the NTX and NYC music scenes, Mike Rudnicki (Baboon) and Sean Donovan (Calla), in an indie/kraut/dub rock project aptly titled The Sudden Walk.

Listed skills include Positioning, Consumer Insight, Public Speaking, Brand Marketing, and 46 others.