Ogilvy Sydney’s ECD Chris Ford quits, Baxter replaces O’Brien as national CEO
Ogilvy Sydney highly-regarded ECD Chris Ford has quit the agency, and Ogilvy’s executive chairman Tom Moult has reshuffled his management line-up for the first time since he joined from Euro RSCG in November last year.
Ford is leaving the agency to return to San Francisco for family reasons. He said: “My family has not adjusted as well as we would have liked and wish to return to San Francisco. It was a great experience for all, and would not trade it for the world, but family comes first.”
Andrew Baxter (pictured), the CEO of Ogilvy’s Melbourne office, has been promoted to national CEO. He will oversee all Ogilvy group companies, with the exception of Ogilvy PR. Baxter replaces Stuart O’Brien, who has been moved to a new role – national creative strategy director. The position will look at rolling out Ogilvy consulting services.
“Stuart O’Brien has been an outstanding CEO and takes on this new role with our blessing and best wishes. His passion is with solving business problems for clients, and looking for new service offerings, and his new role will allow him to focus on this,” said Moult.
On O’Brien’s new role, Moult said that although Ogilvy’s Sydney and Melbourne operations had seen four years of year-on-year growth across its local client base, “we need to look to the future to ensure this success continues.”
At Badjar Ogilvy in Melbourne, Michael McEwan, Nick Muncaster and Andrew Egan will run the agency as joint managing partners in place of Baxter.
Other changes include the promotion of Brian Merrifield to digital CD, and Damian Damjanovski to head of digital planning at Ogilvy Sydney.
Good on you Billy, welcome back to Sin City
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Congratulations Billy, well deserved.
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To lose one ECD might seem careless, to lose two ECDs in a matter of weeks is a disaster for Ogilvy, no matter how much they try to distract with these PR red herrings.
Knox and Ford are both great talents, and Ogilvy/Moult couldn’t hold on to them.
That’s the real story and the trade press all missed it and published a press release.
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