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Top creative Graham Fink to leave Ogilvy China

Graham Fink, who’s achieved pretty much everything a creative can do in a long career beginning at London’s fabled CDP (where he fibbed about his age to get in) is leaving Ogilvy China where he has headed the creative operation since joining from M&C Saatchi in 2011. Fink was also on Ogilvy’s Worldwide Creative Council.

Fink (below), who is also a considerable artist, says:”I have had six wondrous years at Ogilvy. Now I need a new challenge. My ‘Eye-drawings’ have opened my eyes to the great new opportunities of VR, AR and AI: creativity is at such a pivotal point. I will also continue to teach and develop the creative talent our industry needs.”

News of his departure will attract the attention of numerous agencies and holding companies as he’s one of the few creatives around who can point to both domestic and international successes. Ogilvy has emerged in recent years as the big agency network winner at Cannes, ahead of BBDO, and before then Fink hoovered up awards at Saatchi & Saatchi with writer Jeremy Clark.

Here’s an account of the genesis of Saatchi’s famous ‘Face’ commercial for British Airways.

The brief for a new blockbuster commercial for British Airways had been in the creative department for a long time and people were getting twitchy. Just ahead of a critical 2pm client presentation meeting, the creative team Graham Fink and Jeremy Clark revealed, from a restaurant, that they’d left an idea in their office. It was a very rough scribble of a rather grotesque, disconnected smiling mouth, an eye and a nose, and finally a scribbled face. With an equally rough production estimate cobbled together (about £1m) just in time, the presentation went ahead.

With a V/O by Sir Michael Caine. Fink was never one to do things by halves.

The US is one of the few missing geographies on the Fink CV. Just a thought.

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