H!PE to Host Saatchi & Saatchi Creative Director, Neal Foard

Champaign - Creative Director Neal Foard will be speaking at a professional development luncheon for H!PE, The Ad Club of Champaign Urbana on May 9, 2006. Foard serves as Creative Director for Saatchi's retail division with chief responsibility for their Toyota account and will be presenting his talk, "Getting Clients to Buy Concepts: How I Learned to Stop Apologizing and Sell Shamelessly.”

“We're excited to kick-off the first H!PE event with guest speaker Neil Foard of Saatchi & Saatchi.” said Al Fleener, Board President of H!PE and SURFACE 51 owner, “As Champaign-Urbana continues on its path towards a greater appreciation of creativity and a broader definition of what that means, Neil’s perspectives on how we can all better communicate our ideas are more timely than ever.”

The luncheon will be held at The Great Impasta, downtown Champaign, on Tuesday, May 9 at 12:30p. Tickets are $13 for students, $20 for members of H!PE or the American Advertising Federation, and $35 for all other professionals/non-members. Those interested in attending should email info@cu-adclub.org for more information and to RSVP.

More on Neil Foard:
For his work at Saatchi & Saatchi, Foard became the 4th most awarded Creative Director in the USA for 2002 according to Boards Magazine. Before Saatchi, Foard was Executive Creative Director of Bates Advertising in Hong Kong, where he was responsible for some of the region's largest accounts, including Nokia, Heineken, Sony, HSBC, Hong Kong Telecom and Rolls Royce. Before Hong Kong, Neal was a partner at Open Minds in Laguna Beach, California working on Budweiser and General Motors. Prior to that, Neal served at Team One Advertising as part of the team that launched the Lexus brand in the USA.