Agency, Production Company Moves Pick Up Pace at Year's End
In a good omen for 2011, new signings at agencies and production companies (such as Director Paris Barclay, seen here, joining greatguns) seem to be breaking out all over.
Agency, Production Company Moves
Pick Up Pace at Year's End
A rash of Chief Creative Officer and ECD changes mirrors a steady stream
of new director signings at production companies. Are better
days around the corner? One industry insider thinks so.
By Anthony Vagnoni
From our vantage point here at SourceEcreative, the industry is in a constant state of flux, with people moving from job to job almost incessantly. Still, there's been an unusual spate of recent announcements of major new signings that seems to suggest an industry in the throes of a feel-good revival.
This mini-trend seems to be having an impact not just on the production company side, where the industry trades in the US and the UK have been swamped with new director postings just over the past few weeks, but on the agency side as well, where several Chief Creative Officer posts have just been filled and at least a half-dozen new Executive Creative Directors have been named just since the start of the month.
The movement on the agency side has been so robust, as a matter of fact, that the ad trade Adweek has posted a poll on its web site, asking readers which of the most recently named new creative chiefs stand the best chance of flaming out in their new jobs. (To vote, click here.)
Reporter Andy McMains, a longtime observer of the agency business, reported that five agencies have named new CCOs in the US just within the past five weeks. The list includes Mark Hunter, named at Deutsch, L.A.; Peter Nicholson, who landed at JWT, New York, to fill the role vacated earlier this year by Ty Montague (for more on this, click here);Lance Jensen, one of the founders of Boston's Modernista!, who left his partner's post at the independent agency to join Hill Holliday; Al Kelly, who was named CCO at the New York office of Euro RSCG; Jason Peterson, a former Berlin Cameron United CD who left Translation in New York to take the CCO post at Euro RSCG in Chicago; former Leo Burnett CD Bob Shallcross, who's left a small independent in Dallas to take the ECD spot at the Moroch office there.
One of the most surprising moves has seen Mother New York's Linus Karlsson, who left the independent hot shop, taking over as the top creative at McCann-Erickson in New York. Indeed, the moves of Jensen and Karlsson represent a reversal of a recent mini-trend that's seen top creative executives of network agencies, such as JWT's Montague and DDB New York's Eric Silver, leaving for equity positions with smaller, independent shops. Those moves came on top of a spate of big-ticket creative director switches that got the industry talking earlier this fall (for more on this, check out the SourceEcreative report and chart here.)
But these aren't the only agency moves of late that seem to have capped off a busy year in the ad business, at least here in the States. Also making moves were:
- Mike McKay, who took over at ECD at BBDO, San Francisco, from a post at Saatchi & Saatchi in Los Angeles;
- Tom Godici and Greg Ketchum, who left ECD spots at Ogilvy & Mather in New York for similar posts at BBDO;
- David Carson, a former partner and co-founder of the broadband content site Heavy.com, who rejoined Ogilvy & Mather, New York as an ECD;
- Paul Stechshulte, who left Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to join cross-town indie Pereira & O'Dell as an ECD.
On the production company side, there's no shortage of signing announcements as well. This is to be expected, since prod co's tend to outnumber agencies and by and large they're infinitely smaller operations, but even so the number of director singings that have been reported just over the past few weeks seems higher than usual, particularly from the vantage point of an information service that's been tracking such moves for years.
For example, SourceEcreative has covered numerous switches of production company affiliations, including Green Dot's signing of JacobsBriere, Gage & Betterton signing with Superstudio, Frederic Planchon signing with Anonymous Content, Polynoid signing with Passion Pictures in London, David Kerr joining Hotspur & Argyle of London, Paris Barclay signing with greatguns:usa, AB/CD/CD signing with Partizan, Common Good signing with Radke in Toronto, David Turnley signing with Curious Pictures, Creative Director and VFX whiz Alex Frisch signing with Imaginary Forces; Barton Landsman signing with Third Street Mining Company, John Budion signing with Humble, Matthias Zentner signing with Harvest, "Burlesque" director Steven Antin and feature DP and director Jonathan Brown signing with Tate USA, Syyn Labs signing with Motion Theory, Kevin Ward and Brent Jones joining Original Film, Jim Field Smith signing with Little Minx, fashionista Morgan Lawley hooking up with Synthetic Pictures, Zac & Mac joining The Cortez Brothers, former agency CD John Grammatico signing with CoMPANY, feature director Joby Harold signign with Safehouse Pictures, Director Amir Farhang signing with Uber Content and Matt Goodman and Peter Rodger singing with Bandito Brothers. Whew!
But wait, there's more. Park Pictures has launched an office in London and signed Director Guy Manwaring, and two Motion Theory Partners, EP Javier Jimenez and Director Mathew Cullen, have joined forces with feature director Guillermo del Toro and DP Guillermo Navarro to launch a new production company, Mirada. Also opening a new shop are Director Charlie Cole and EP Neil Hallenborg, who've formed Charcoal Films.
.jpg)
The production company moves come on top of additional talent and EP signings that SourceEcreative has reported in the visual effects, post production and music production sides of the business.
The combination of these changes, along with the robust activity in the creative ranks, offers positive signs for the coming year. This is a sentiment backed up by veteran creative recruiter Anne-Marie Marcus of MarcuStjean in New York. We last checked in with her back in September, when we reported on the wave of top CCO and ECD changes that had racked the agency business in the US over the previous two months. At the time, Marcus chalked up the churn to a sense of fatigue on the part of the industry's creative leaders. It had been a tough couple of years, marked by layoffs and unrelenting pressure; many of the moves, she felt, had to do with downtrodden talents needing a change of scenery to stay enthused about their careers.
What a difference a few months make. These most recent agency CCO and ECD changes, she says, are more a reflection of better times ahead than anything. "A lot of agencies have gone about making changes in ways that suits them best," she points out, whether it's Deutsch in L.A. hiring Mark Hunter largely on the strength of his experience in markets outside the US, JWT bringing in Peter Nicholson, who's had experience outside the traditional agency structure or McCann bringing in Mother's Karlsson, who has a reputation as a creative iconoclast.
"But the major difference," adds Marcus, who says her office is busier than it's been in some time, "is that many of these moves reflect a new sense of confidence on the part of agencies. It's at a level we've not seen in the past year or so, and we think it's very encouraging.
Published 22 December, 2010
Membership
