Creative Director Moves A Sign of the Times
Worn out or emotionally drained, some (like Eric Silver, at (right) are opting for new settings or new challenges, says a veteran headhunter.
Creative Director Migration in US Seems Busier than Usual
By Anthony Vagnoni
The times, they are a changin’. So are the top CD posts at agencies all over the US.
In recent weeks, a spate of top creative directors have switched jobs. (See chart below.) The list includes the typical movement from one shop to another, as well as slightly more significant moves that involve top creative executives at major multinational network agencies going out on their own to work at either new start ups or smaller, independent shops.
The movement has been enough to prompt Advertising Age to publish a lengthy analysis piece on the trend, in which it recounts many of the recent moves and tries to put them into context. For more on the story, click here.) On top of that, the magazine's mystery agency blogger, who goes by the name Creative X, also weighed in on the topic with a posting that went up this week under the headline, “Why New-Hire Creative Bigwigs Barely Make it Through the Appetizers.” In it Mr. or Ms. X calls 2010 “the summer of amicable departures” and warns many of the shape-shifters to “watch where you step.”
Leading the report, of course, is the recent announcement by Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky and MDC Partners that he is leaving the ad business to pursue a raft of other lofty endeavors.
But there’s been more than just a single defection of an industry rockstar. Creative director shifts have occurred at smaller agencies, bigger agencies, international agencies, well-regarded agencies, slumping agencies—pretty much a cross-section of the business.
For example, Will McGinness, a longtime Goodby CD, has moved cross-town to independent agency Venables, Bell & Partners. In New York, former Y&R Creative Director Darren Moran has been named the new Chief Creative Officer of Draftfcb. Also making news has been the move of Mark Peters from the blazingly hot mcgarrybowen to Deutsch in L.A., where he’ll work on the VW business.
In Amsterdam, Jeff Kling resigned from Wieden + Kennedy and has been replaced in the ECD role by the creative team behind the “Write the Future” Nike campaign, Mark Bernath and Eric Quennoy.
Marty Cooke, former Creative Director at Chiat\Day’s offices in both New York and Toronto and most recently a partner at SS+K, has left to take on the Chief Creative Officer post at Rapp, the direct response agency.
Two moves are notable in that they represent a new holding company-driven agency model dedicated to a single advertiser: Harvey Marco has resigned from JWT New York, where he was Chief Creative Officer, to return to the West Coast (where he was the top creative at Toyota agency Saatchi & Saatchi in Torrance, CA) as the lead creative at Team Mazda, while Sean Thompson leaves 180 Amsterdam to head up Team Volvo, the joint venture agency that includes units of Arnold Worldwide, Euro RSCGT and SapientNitro.
In another big-name move, former DDB Chief Creative Officer and BBDO and Cliff Freeman veteran Eric Silver acquired a majority stake in the independent agency Amalgamated and will be the shop’s new Chief Creative Officer. Jason Gaboriau, a founding partner of Amalgamated and its Executive Creative Director since it opened its doors in 2002, has sold his interest in the shop and is looking to make the opposite move that Silver made—from running a small, feisty indie shop to managing a creative department at a larger, multinational agency.
Joining Silver and Bogusky as refugees from multinational, network agencies is the former Fast Company magazine cover boy Ty Montague, who recently stepped down from his Co-CEO role at JWT in New York to open a new, collaboration-based venture called Co: in partnership with Rosemary Ryan, his former business-side partner at JWT. Also in this vein, former BBDO, TBWA\Chiat\Day and Saatchi & Saatchi creative star Gerry Graf left the big agency ranks to form his own small independent, named Barton F. Graf 9000.
Going in the opposite direction—as Gaboriau intends to—is Bruce Bildsten, the former Fallon creative director (and leader of the agency’s team on the famed BMW Films series from Anonymous Content which broke new ground in the area of branded content almost a decade ago), who leaves his own small Minneapolis-based independent, Brew, to return to Fallon Worldwide to head up creative on its recently-awarded Cadillac business.
So what gives?
While churn is nothing new to the ad biz, this time things are a little different, says Anne-Marie Marcus, CEO of the New York-based recruiting and placement specialists Marcustjean. “I think it’s all a result of last year,” she says. “It took a tremendous toll on everybody in the business. I think it’s taken a little while for people to lick their wounds and figure out what they wanted to do. For many, they realized they weren’t happy, and wanted to do something else.”
The ‘toll’ that Marcus is referring to usually has to do with bloodletting, she notes—the frequent round of layoffs and cutbacks that rocked creative and production departments at agencies of all sizes.
She also notes that agencies themselves have turned to changes in leadership as a way to help recover from a bad year. “It’s like a sports team—if you’re playing poorly, you change coaches or switch managers,” she says.
Will all of this affect the work? No more so than all the other factors that are changing the face of advertising these days, says Marcus. “I don’t think it will change any more than it’s already been changing,” she says. “That’s more a factor of the times we’re in—the output of an agency is now quite different than it was before.”
What it will definitely do, she adds, is create a bit of a trickle-down movement in lower ranks. “Each departure usually means there’s a new position to be filled,” she points out, as only a savvy headhunter would do. And that means even more titles will change.
Published 22 September 2010
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