Atomic 212 managing director Ian Czencz exits
The managing director of Atomic 212, Ian Czencz, has resigned. Czencz joined the agency in 2018 from Blue 449, where he had been chief strategy officer.
James Dixon, founding partner, will now be taking on management of Atomic 212’s Sydney office, alongside chairman Barry O’Brien, general manager Tom Sheppard and managing director of Melbourne, Claire Fenner.
Czencz said he was proud of helping Atomic 212 move forward
The agency said Czencz has played a pivotal role in resetting the business and formulating a new strategic direction.
“We thank Ian for his contribution, and wish him every success in the future as he looks to concentrate on his first love – strategy,” said O’Brien.
Czencz added that the agency was ready to move forward.
“Atomic 212 is in a great position to press forward into their next phase of growth, and I’m proud to have played a part in helping them move forward,” he said.
During his career, Czencz has also been in the chief strategy role at Match Media for nine years before the agency rebranded to Blue 449 in late 2016. Upon his departure, Blue 449’s Zara Cobb was promoted to fill Czencz’s role.
Czencz’s next role is not yet clear.
Ian is a great operator, Barry O’Brien is also a great operator but I guess today you have a clash of approaches as times change and technology begins to take over the remit of agencies.
Ian is very much “embrace technology as the enabler” and “work with clients to implement strategic technology agents of advantage”, Barry the old school “if you can buy it cheap as, you’ll be alright mate.”
There is still room for both in agency land, at least for now, but this is where the big agency groups will always lead because they actually can afford both approaches and have the scale to genuinely still add value through genuinely buying it cheap as.
Its not that you take better strategy over cheap buying, its that you want good thinking and strategy and then when you execute, of course, knock your socks off and try and get a good old fashioned cheap as deal.
This is evident in the swing of staff at the media owner side where I would say technology and digital staff far out way old school single column centimetre sales men.
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High business overhead
Promise of greatness
No cash to make it happen
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Tough position to comeback from. They should look to rebrand or merge with another independent.
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Atomic needs a rebrand. Prior CEO has all but killed it under its current name.
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Actually Dixon did get a mention in the Sydney Morning Herald recently for running the Sydney Opera House Ads in Anti-Female content which is amusing on a number of levels.
“The Opera House was unknowingly marketing its upcoming hit show The Choir of Man on YouTube videos that described single mothers as “terrible” and working mums as “too busy at work to properly take care of their kids”.”
James Dixon said the advertisement was “not intended to appear on this channel”.
LOL, no kidding.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/sydney-opera-house-ads-appeared-next-to-anti-women-youtube-videos-20190225-p5103j.html
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Looking at their client list I don’t think they’re overly concerned:
With clients like Origin, BHP, TAB, NSW Tourism, NT Tourism, Rockstar Games seems like things are pretty good.
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With respect Sue, James founded the business that went on to employ lots of staff, create jobs and do some great work. In his first agency job he created an agency that you all are commenting on.
Just because he doesn’t run in the same circles as you, doesn’t mean you have to be vitriolic behind a name online.
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