DAN’s Mitchell McBeath resigns from Columbus national MD role
Mitchell McBeath, Columbus’ national managing director, has resigned from his position, making him the latest exit at the Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) following the redundancies of Nick Swifte and Indy Khabra last week.
DAN confirmed the departure of McBeath, who had been with Columbus, a Merkle company, for six and a half years. Merkle is DAN’s data-driven marketing agency.
He joined in May 2013 as general manager, before being promoted to national head of operations in early 2015. Mid-2016, McBeath became general manager NSW, Queensland and operations, and settled in the role of national MD in May last year.
McBeath is the latest in a string of exits at holding company DAN
Before joining Columbus, McBeath was a group account director at Reprise from 2009 to 2013, and a senior account manager at Mediacom from 2006 to 2009.
DAN officially launched Merkle in the Australian market in March last year, which saw Columbus rebranded to ‘Columbus, a Merkle Company’. At the time, Columbus’ CEO was Rebecca Tos. In June, Tos was promoted to lead parent company Merkle as ANZ managing director, a few months into his DAN CEO Henry Tajer’s tenure, in what has become a large-scale restructure of the holding group.
In late May, DAN made a number of executives redundant, including Adrian Roeling, president of Amplifi, Nick Seckold, managing director of marketing agency iProspect, and Andrew Hewett, head of public affairs and communications for DAN.
Amplifi’s head of programmatic Luke Manley was made redundant in July, following Michael Bass’ appointment as Amplifi’s chief investment officer two weeks earlier, who stepped into the role following Ashley Earnshaw becoming CEO of DAN media agency Vizeum.
Carat managing director Simon Williams also departed in July after Sue Squillace was named CEO.
Last month, Angela Tangas became Dentsu X’s chief commercial officer, while Daniel Isaac was appointed as the agency’s CEO. Two weeks ago, Erik Hallander was promoted to Isobar ANZ CEO, ahead of the departure of Swifte and Khabra last week.
The extreme shake-up follows the loss of significant accounts across the group, including Super Retail Group, Virgin Australia, Asahi, Mondelēz International, Amart, and Bega.
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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Mitch is a solid operator and will be a big loss at the top for Columbus / Merkin, I mean Merkle…
Seems like a leaky bucket over there in DAN-land
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Good.
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I have a feeling he was forced to resign, due to all the internal restructures, internal politics and loss of clients/resources.
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As someone that worked at Columbus, Mitch is an awesome guy and great leader. We all know he had plans to leave this sinking DAN ship and look after his own career.
Good on you mate, your team and clients will always love working with you and all the best.
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