In her new role, she will oversee agencies including Teamspirit, Heresy, the AMD Group, Pure Media, Roose and the Will Pond-Jones Collective.
Farr left the BBC in 2000 after four years as the director of marketing, where she was best known for campaigns such as the award-winning "Perfect Day".
Mostly recently, Farr held the role of European managing director of the Interpublic Group of Companies PR agency Golin/Harris International. However, she left that post six months ago after the agency put its international expansion plans on hold.
She said she had been offered a number of roles since, but decided to join Lord Bell's Chime Communications.
Farr said: "What attracts me to Chime is the decent and interesting group of talent it has throughout the group and among its management team. I'm looking forward to getting to know the people in the companies I will be responsible for and, of course, their clients."
Chime saw pre-tax profits plummet by more than 50% to £7m over 2002, after what the company described as a "very poor" year. It was forced to sell 49% of its stake in the ad agency HHCL & Partners to the WPP Group for £3.5m. The agency was subsequently rebranded HHCL/Red Cell.
Lord Bell, chairman of Chime, said: "If I was a marketing director or a chief executive with great interest in marketing, I can't think of anyone I would rather speak to than Sue. She has a deep understanding of marketing and communication's role in it. She is a high-profile hiring for us and we look forward to her helping us develop our advertising and marketing services business, as well as contributing to the overall management of the group."
Farr began working in the television industry in 1990 when she joined Thames Televison as the director of corporate communications. In 1992, she was the marketing director at the launch of UK Gold, and a year later she joined the BBC as head of radio marketing at the BBC. She took up the marketing director role in 1996. Before joining Thames Televison, Farr was business development director at the advertising agency WCRS.
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