Rick Boyko

Rick Boyko, former Chief Creative Officer and Co-President of Ogilvy & Mather North America, joined the VCU Adcenter on July 1, 2003 as its managing director. In addition to teaching, he oversees financial and personnel management, as well as fundraising and outreach to individuals and firms in the advertising industry.

In the years since Rick has become its director, the school has changed quite dramatically. Its curriculum evolved to include concentrations in Communications Strategy, Creative Brand Management, and Creative Technology, in addition to the existing Art Direction and Copywriting tracks. The student body has grown from 100 graduate students annually to 200, and the faculty from four professors to eleven. This change was capped off on January 14, 2008 with the changing of the school’s name from VCU Adcenter to VCU Brandcenter. At that time the school moved into its new home, an open, creative and collaborative breeding ground designed by world-renowned architect, Clive Wilkinson.

These changes have not gone unnoticed. Over the years the Brandcenter was ranked the number 1 advertising program in the country by Advertising Age’s Creativity magazine.

BusinessWeek recognized the school’s unique curriculum and named it one of the sixty best business/design schools in the world. The Brandcenter also received the 4A’s O’Toole Award for Creative Excellence. Yet the award the school values most, is the 98% placement rate its graduates have continually earned, even in today’s difficult economy. There are now over 1000 alumni working at agencies, media companies and marketers around the world.

Because of the Brandcenter’s unique collaborative curriculum, Coca-Cola, Lexus, Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo, Google, M&M Mars, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, The Learning Channel, Tourism Industry of America and AICP are just a few of the marketers who have challenged our students with real world assignments.

In an effort to attract more diverse professionals to our industry, Rick developed and has led Project Inspire as part of Advertising Week over the past eight years. The goal of Project Inspire is to expose diverse high school students to the possibilities of a career in advertising. With the aid of the 4A’s, last year Rick helped conceive and produce Pursuit of Passion, a film aimed to expose high school students, their parents and their counselors to the industry. This film is currently being distributed to high schools around the country.

Rick began his career in 1974 as an art director at Leo Burnett Chicago, and moved to Chiat/Day Los Angeles in 1982. He joined Ogilvy & Mather New York in 1989 and in 1997 was named Chief Creative Officer and Co-President of Ogilvy’s $1.5 billion flagship New York office. The following year Rick was also named North American Chief Creative Officer. He ascended to that post with a mission: to reclaim the creative ethos of legendary founder David Ogilvy. He worked to seamlessly integrate the efforts of Ogilvy’s creative departments throughout the North American network and started many new initiatives that helped set Ogilvy apart from its competition, winning Agency of the year in 2000.

While Rick has won almost every advertising award there is, he feels most proud of two accomplishments unrelated to advertising. First, in May 2001, in honor of his career achievements, Rick was awarded the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Then, in October 2001, in the aftermath of the September 11 tragedy, Rick conceived of and was the driving force behind “Brotherhood,” a tabletop book honoring the 343 firemen who perished. It sold more than 200,000 copies and the proceeds of $1.5 million went to the families of the firemen. In light of Brotherhood’s contributions to the Fire Department of New York, Rick was designated an Honorary Deputy Chief in the FDNY.

An active member of the VCU Brandcenter Board of Directors since 2000, he was honored on behalf of Ogilvy & Mather when they were inducted into VCU’s Founders’ Society. In 2008 Rick and his wife, Barbara, gifted the Brandcenter one million dollars. Over the years Rick has been dedicated to improving the industry having served on the Boards of both the Art Directors Club and One Club. Currently, he sits on the Board of Advertising Week, and the Advisory Board of The Marcus Graham Project and has served as the Dean of the Roger Hatchuel Cannes Academy for the past five years. He has previously sat on the boards of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Napster and Butler Shine Stern & Partners.

Rick has been married to his wife Barbara for 37 years. They have three daughters Mary, Jess and Kate, one granddaughter Dylan Jane with another granddaughter expected this June.