New broom King’s reign at Publicis UK sees departure of agency CEO Guy Wieynk

Publicis Worldwide UK and Western Europe CEO Guy Wieynk (below) is leaving after nearly four years, a pretty successful stint which included winning Morrisons and Lastminute.com. Nick Farnhill is taking over in the UK.

This looks like the first big move from Annette King, newly ensconced as CEO of Publicis Groupe UK, in effect Publicis country manager, since she joined from Ogilvy Group a year or so ago.

Single agency CEOs are becoming an endangered species in today’s adland as the big holding groups try to pull services together and save money along the way. King’s old agency WPP-owned Ogilvy has seen a number of C-suite execs depart, including one-time CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Charlie Rudd. It’s a fair bet that there’ll be others over Christmas and the holiday period.

With clients cutting back and taking more operations in-house it’s hardly surprising that such execs are being deemed redundant but it also suggests a degree of trouble in the future as agency groups find themselves short of people good at dealing with clients at a senior level.

Agency creative departments are already suffering from a lack of middle-ranking teams as they’ve busily recruited young digital operators at the expense of people who can still produce, say, a decent TV campaign.