In Conversation with Samira Ansari

Samira has over 20 years experience working across three continents. Her career began at Cummins and Partners in Australia, working on planes, trains and automobiles. She was part of the team that successfully launched Virgin Airlines in Australasia. This campaign was so successful, it forced Qantas to launch its own low budget airline to compete with the new sassy Virgin brand. She then landed at Saatchi and Saatchi Paris where she led the agency’s P&G laundry business across EMEA for 4 years. In 2008 Samira arrived in New York. While at JWT NY, she created the brutally honest, award-wining campaign for U by Kotex, revamping the female sanitary product market. At Chiat Day NY she produced a multi-award-winning campaign for Wheat Thins. And at Grey, Samira and team took Pringles to the Super Bowl for the very first time. She spent a year at Johannes Leonardo as Group Creative Director in charge of Mass Mutual and Gap. The agency was ranked #3 on Adage’s Annual A-list that year. Samira joined FCB NY in January 2020 as Executive Creative Director responsible for the agency’s ABI portfolio creating Michelob Ultra Courtside with NBA & Microsoft to bring fans into the NBA bubble in Orlando. Her team also launched Michelob Ultra Organic Seltzer at the Super Bowl with great success. FCB was named Adweek Global Agency Of The Year in 2020 and Cannes 2020/2021 Global Network of the year. Samira was also the most awarded ECD in NA at The One Show that year. In 2022, Michelob Ultra continued making headlines with the launch of McEnroe vs McEnroe, an hour-long program debuting on ESPN. In 2022 Mikes Hard Lemonade was also launched throughout South America with a campaign demonstrating that Mikes could go wherever beer was, because sometimes you just don’t really want a beer. The campaign is hugely successful and is being rolled out in more countries. Samira was named one of AdWeek’s Creative 100 in June 2022, the same month she joined Deutsch NY as their Chief Creative Officer. Over the years, her work has been recognized by local and international award shows; The Cannes Lions festival, The D&AD, Clio, The One Show, the ADC, and the Effies. Samira is not at all related to comedian Aziz Ansari, but once convinced the maître d at the Bellagio in Vegas that she was to get the penthouse, free of charge.