Exclusive: Amnesia creative director in talks with Reading Room
Mumbrella can reveal that Amnesia Razorfish creative director Andrew Richardson is leaving the digital agency and is in talks to take up a role with the UK-based Reading Room which is looking to bolster its Australian operation.
As a full service digital agency with a strong focus on social media, Reading Room launched in 1997 and has offices in London, Manchester and Canberra.
It has a small presence in Sydney and it is understood that the agency is now looking to recuit staff to grow its Sydney office.
Richardson’s departure comes just two weeks after Mumbrella revealed that Amnesia founder Terry Carney had left after a decade at the helm.
Meanwhile, Amnesia’s Rodd Messent has also left to launch the Sydney office of digital agency Sputnik.
The departures come at a time of ongoing turmoil for Amnesia, which in 2006 was sold to US-based digital network Avenue A Razorfish and was subsequently renamed Amnesia Razorfish. The digital network was sold by Microsoft to Publicis earlier this year.
Razorfish Asia Pacific president Lee Sherman declined to comment on Richardson’s departure, but said Iain McDonald continues in his role as executive creative director and co-MD at the agency.
Oh Tim… Now when are you going to write an article about all the amazingly talented senior people who have joined Amnesia in the last 12 months and 75+ staff who are really happy here and have been with the company for years!?
Most importantly you forgot to mention in your article that Amnesia’s previous Creative Director (the multi award winning Andrew Pearce) recently returned from a year overseas and is back working with an unchanged team from over a year ago.
Right, back to the important stuff – (urrr trying to do good work), not being baited any further! 😉
Iain
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Hi Iain,
Always happy to give the good news too, when you tell us about it.
But as I understand it, Lee is currently the person authorised to speak to the press on behalf of the agency, and his approach is generally a polite no comment, althoguh we will of course always carry on trying.
Cheers,
Tim
Reading Room trying yet again in the Australian market, Andrew don’t do it, it would be a huge step down. There is a reason Reading Room isn’t growing in Australia.
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Slightly premature (but my teenage years would make me a hypocrite for pulling Mumbrella up on that).*
I can confirm that I’m moving to London, I’m talking to a number of agencies including the UK Razorfish Office. The ideal result would be to move smoothly from the Sydney office straight over to the Razorfish UK office, negotiations are underway..
The move is a last minute thing, mostly inspired by a long time dream to write children’s novels and also because my wife made me – and I pretty much do whatever she says.
I’m enormously thankful for my time with Amnesia|Razorfish and the last thing I want to do is shut the door there (thanks Mumbrella).
Keep an eye an out for my novel “Kangaroo Pete and the Haunted Submarine”, all I need is an agent, about 12 more chapters and someone apart from my mum to like it.
I’m very proud of the work that Amnesia has done this year and the transition to be a part of the Publicis family will be a great thing for the team. I look forward to being woken up on cold London mornings by drunken texts from Andy Pearce and Iain McDonald in the near future.
Cheers,
Andrew Richardson
*LIke a fine wine I improved over time
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I had a comment about Amnesia… but I forgot it.
While I’m not sure I’d ever subject a child to the inner workings of Mr Richardson’s mind, I think we need to think of this as a win:
It’s a reversal of the convict system – now we’re sending our trouble makers to their shores!
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Not sure a story headlined ‘Senior Staff at Amnesia are Amazingly Talented and Happy’ would really have the readers reading in droves.
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