Ammirati

Matthew F. Ammirati started as a bayman on the East End of Long Island before training as an art director at the School of Visual Arts and joining Ammirati Puris Lintas. The name was already part of advertising history: his great-uncle Ralph Ammirati co-founded Ammirati & Puris, the agency behind BMW’s “The Ultimate Driving Machine.”

In 2000 he founded his own agency, Ammirati, in New York. Adweek profiled the shop in 2005, noting its stark white look and national print work for Budweiser and Bud Light. Over the years Ammirati created the brands for vitaminwater and Montauk Brewing, launched Street Fighter IV with Capcom and developed Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

In 2014 Ammirati merged with Resource, the digital agency based in Columbus, Ohio, to form Resource/Ammirati. In January 2016 IBM announced it would acquire the 300-person agency, its first acquisition of a digital marketing and creative agency, and folded it into IBM iX. Matthew then took that thinking inside a Fortune 500 company at Newell Brands.