Senior creative Rosie Arnold quits BBH for AMV
There won’t be anyone we know left at BBH soon: now deputy ECD Rosie Arnold, who joied the agency from college back in the 1980s, is leaving to be creative partner and head of art at rival AMV BBDO.
Arnold (left) became a creative director in 1999 and deputy ECD in 2008.
BBH founder Sir John Hegarty says: “Rosie has been one of the stars of BBH’s rise to fame, a creative thinker of outstanding qualities. Her 33 years at the agency have seen her at the centre of some of our most iconic work. She’s a testament to the success women can attain in a so-called masculine world.”
Last week managing director Mel Exon left To join The Sunshine Company, hard on the heels of the agency’s two chief strategy officers quitting. They follow in a well-trodden path of senior exits following the agency’s sale to Publicis Groupe, most notably global CEO Gwyn Jones who left in 2014. He was replaced by Neil Munn.
BBH is a very different agency post Publicis, having lost accounts including Johnnie Walker, Axe and Baileys. It no longer seems to be Audi’s lead agency in Europe. It has won Tesco, brought in by Munn who worked with Tesco CEO Dave Lewis at Unilever and Heinz. 18 months ago it made massive redundancies, resulting in the departure of about a quarter of its London staff.
Arnold is quite entitled to move on after 33 years of course. It’s interesting that one of her titles at AMV BBDO is head of art. This almost extinct breed seem to be making a comeback. Another industry veteran Dave Dye is fairly newly installed in the role at J. Walter Thompson.