Ogilvy hires Mark Sareff as national strategy chief to boost ‘thinking culture’
In the same week that Ogilvy ditched plans to create a national creative director role, Australia’s largest agency group has created a national head of strategy role.
The position has been filled by Mark Sareff, who joins from the now defunct Happy Soldiers with a brief to oversee strategy across Ogilvy Australia’s 24-strong strategy and planning team in Melbourne and Sydney.
Executive chairman Tom Moult said this week that he had abandoned the national chief creative officer role, which he had billed as ‘the most expansive creative role in Australian advertising’, because there was “too much ground to cover” across both offices.
On this appointment, he told Mumbrella: “A national ECD would be responsible for the creative output of every client in both agencies, which would be too hard. But in Mark’s role, he will come and go on stuff – he won’t have to work on everything all the time.”
Before Happy Soldiers, Sareff was national planning director at The Campaign Palace.
He will be based in the Sydney office.
Moult added: “We’ve chased him down because he is the best guy in the business. I have challenged Mark to increase the ‘thinking culture’ across our whole business. I haven’t found any disagreement with clients when I tell them that I believe the agency of the future will be trading arms and legs for brains.”
Last week, Ogilvy hired Brett Howlett to replace Chris Ford as ECD for its Sydney office. The agency is hunting for a replacement for Ogilvy Melbourne’s former ECD Michael Knox, who left to join Grey Melbourne in May.
topics
Chris Ford
Mark Sareff
Michael Knox
Ogilvy Australia
Ogilvy Melbourne
Ogilvy Sydney
Tom Moult
this is a terrific hire for Ogilvy. Mark is an outstanding planner and a lovely man.
He is the best planner in the entire bloody universe. The best.
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Brilliant hire. Many congratulations Mark!
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Nice one Mark. Congratulations!
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