Former OMD, Mindshare and Ikon CEO James Greet appointed COO at Hero
James Greet has joined Hero as chief operating officer after a number of recent wins for the agency, including Toyota, Maybelline New York and eBay.
Hero, the holding group which consolidated its group of agencies owned by founder Ben Lilley last year, has appointed Greet to the newly created role after six months working in an advisory role. The role marks Greet’s return to a full-time position agency-side for the first time since departing Cummins & Partners in 2017.
In his new role, Greet will support Lilley and chief financial officer Zain Hoosen, to further integrate Hero’s marketing communications offerings and push new organic growth for Hero and its clients.
“I’ve loved working with Hero as an advisor and now am thrilled to be stepping into this key new role,” said Greet. “I couldn’t be more excited to be part of the next stage of growth of this remarkable model, with creative, media, production, PR, data and technology all under the one roof.”
James Greet
“James has built his career operating at the intersection of creativity, comms strategy and technology, just like Hero,” said Lilley. “His experience launching, growing and transforming wildly successful agency operations is precisely what we’ve been seeking to fuel our ambition to offer our clients of the very best integrated creative and technology business across Australia and New Zealand.”
Greet has significant experience working in key roles at several creative and media agencies. He was widely thought of as one of the most effective agency leaders during his time as CEO of OMD and then afterwards, Mindshare as the CEO of ANZ, Japan and South Korea. He has also previously led Ikon before moving to Cummins & Partners as chief media officer.
Since then, Greet has been running his consultancy business, Clean Thinking, along with other industry leaders including James Sykes.
Hero was founded in 2020 by Lilley, bringing together his agencies, McCann, The Red Republic, Smart, JSA Digital and Engine Room productions under one consolidated group. The move, Lilley said represents a new “post-COVID” world, where clients want a “singles-service model.”
The hire follows continued growth for the Hero group, with marketing agency B.B.E picking up the strategy and creative for plant-based meat company, V2Food in April and McCann Melbourne hiring Psembi Kinstan into a newly created executive creative director role in December.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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