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Sometimes people move from one agency to another just because they do; in other cases it might mean a bit more.
Two such surfaced in Campaign this week; Brian Cooper (left) is joining Ogilvy in London as ECD to work mainly on Philips while Paul Hammersley, formerly of The Red Brick Road, is going to run Cossette-owned agencies Dare and Elvis.
Cooper, who was once a creative director at Wieden+Kennedy, moves after a year at Apple where he gloried in the title of head of creative and strategy for iAd, Apple’s app ads business.
Now the attractions of WPP-owned Ogilvy and its Canary Wharf HQ are no doubt legion, but it seems a bit strange to leave the mighty Apple after just a year (especially given the humungous salaries and stock deals available to some execs). So maybe this move indicates that iAd is still in the garage. Apple has bigger things to worry about now, of course, like its plummeting share price (down a quarter this year).
Hammersley (left), a former boss at Lowe and DDB, did a pretty good job at The Red Brick Road by all accounts but the agency, formed by Sir Frank Lowe after his departure from Interpublic-owned Lowe, didn’t take off either, despite the presence of founding client Tesco. When Tesco upped sticks for Wieden+Kennedy last year the writing was on the wall for Hammersley and creative director Paul Weinberger who retired.
It certainly could no longer afford the Apple-style salaries the top execs paid themselves.
For Hammersley it might be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. Dare, which began as a digital agency, merged with another Cossette outfit MCBD a couple of years ago but the MCBD-ites all moved out – or were moved out. Three such – Helen Calcraft, Andy Nairn and Danny Brooke-Taylor – announced last week that they were setting up their own, as yet unnamed agency (Calcraft Nairn and Taylor sounds OK, with Brooke-Taylor it’s not so good – decisions, decisions), which won’t make Hammersley’s new job any easier. Clients rather liked MCBD, a kind of mini AMV/BBDO.
So Hammersley’s job testifies to credibility problems at Dare.
