CHI wins back Sunday Times Rich List and boosts creative department
The&Partnership’s CHI agency seems to be back in the driving seat for News UK as it’s handling this weekend’s campaign for the Sunday Times Rich List, the hugely depressing tally of the UK’s richest citizens. One that doesn’t feature many denizens of adland these days. They have not, so far and unlike the prime minister, been required to produce a tax return.
For the last couple of years the assignment, formerly handled by CHI, has gone to Grey but Grey and News UK have split following the return to Rupert Murdoch’s print empire of Rebekah Brooks, now free of phone hacking allegations. News UK is the new incarnation of News International.
CHI has also hired six new creatives and announced it is dispensing with traditional two-handed creative teams. Laura Rogers has joined as a creative director from Ogilvy, Marc Donaldson from Leo Burnett as the agency’s first head of art, Duncan Brooks from Fallon, Will Grave from M&C Saatchi and Carl Storey and Chris Godfrey from Karamarama. CHI’s creative department is run by CCO Jonathan Burley.
Old-style creative teams are something of an anachronism these days as everybody works in open plan offices. You can no longer lock creatives away and refuse to let them out unless they produce an acceptable idea. Some people would say the old system worked best.
Update
CHI has unveiled its Rich List campaign (it’s this coming weekend not last – I forgot to send my entry in) with tarot cards, featuring among others, the Beckhams and Richard Branson.
The Times and Sunday Times marketing director Catherine Newman says: “As ever, the launch of our annual Rich List campaign is a significant moment for The Sunday Times, signifying as it does the arrival of one of the crown jewels of our editorial calendar. The tarot card creative enables us to tell a story about some of the list’s most famous names from a different perspective, taking a fresh approach to the theme of fortune.”
CHI deputy ECD Micky Tudor says: “The Sunday Times’ annual Rich List campaign is one of the UK’s most consistently celebrated creative campaigns, and we’re so proud to be working on it again. We’re equally proud of the work, which captures the legacies of some of the nation’s best-known personalities in a strikingly memorable way, reimagining the definition of fortune.”