Simon Canning | April 03, 2008
NIGEL Marsh, the adman turned best-selling author who also rescued Leo Burnett from the brink of receivership, has been poached to head one of Australia's biggest advertising agency groups, Y&R Brands.
In a move that will shock the ad industry, Marsh - the author of Fat, Forty and Fired and Observations of a Very Short Man - takes over as chief executive of the agency group in July after spending two years as chairman-at-large of the rival Publicis-owned Leo Burnett agency.
Marsh takes over the regional role from Matt McGrath, who has been named to the new role of executive chairman of Y&R Brands.
The adman, who originally came to Australia from England to head D'Arcy in the late 1990s only to see the global brand dissolve months later, is credited with luring the lion's share of McDonald's Australian business to Burnett when he was in the group's CEO role.
He is also credited with forming the idea for Earth Hour for the World Wildlife Fund (which was a Burnett client) and selling the idea to Phil McLean - an editorial executive at Fairfax Media - whose company adopted the initiative.
Marsh will oversee Y&R Brands agencies including George Patterson Y&R, The Campaign Palace, Ideaworks and direct agency Wunderman.
The move will come as a shock to the industry, with Y&R's agency Patts the focus of a series of damaging stories including the loss of its lead creative team on the Foster's business and the departure of its Melbourne MD Anthony Heraghty to head marketing at the brewer.
The events led to the agency launching legal action against its former MD and then client, culminating with it being dropped as the agency for VB late last year.
Legal action against its former creative director and MD continue, although it is understood the action is now heading towards mediation. Speaking exclusively to Media, Marsh admitted part of his role would be to rebuild elements of Y&R's business.
"(The role) is on a different planet in terms of scale," Marsh said.
"It's 10 brands, 36 offices; it is quite a different role to Leo Burnett."
While Marsh said he had been well aware of the court actions against former staff initiated by Patts and the public criticism of the move, he said it had no bearing on his role at the agency.
Marsh's previous two agency roles have seen him undertake wholesale clear-outs of staff during his tenure.
The moves failed to save D'Arcy, but turned Leo Burnett into an account and award winner.
But he yesterday said he had no plans to repeat the exercise.
McGrath said the agency was in need of someone of Marsh's stature to move it along, saying an agency could "never have too much talent".
"We need to give him the opportunity to take this to the next level," McGrath said.
"We are two years after a merger and the businesses as a whole are in good shape, but it is not great. To get to great we need to bring in new talent. We need to push the boat out and Nigel is going to be critical to that."
Marsh has long been in the sights of Y&R and its global boss, Australian Hamish McLennan, and it is understood he has been approached several times about a possible role with the group in Australia.
Speaking from New York, McLennan said he had been courting Marsh since 2002. "I think he is a phenomenal talent and really good at what he does," McLennan said.
Marsh said the timing of Y&R's latest approach was a key. "I reckon if Hamish had called six months prior it would have been the usual chat. But he called me a week after the launch of the book (Observations of a Very Short Man) last November and when he told me what it was I thought 'blimey that's pretty good'.
"If you look at the scale, breadth and potential of the brands themselves, if you wanted to go back into the workforce for a big hairy challenge then this is it."
Both McGrath and Marsh denied the appointment of a CEO with a high public profile was a bid to distract attention away from the recent account and court woes, although both admitted his profile would be an asset.
But he said his talkative and often opinionated style would not change
"There is no secret about what I am," Marsh said.
"Hamish wanted me to join, Matt wanted me to join and I am on record saying I want to humanise the corporate sector. I am coming to this job with no compromise whatsoever to my values and Hamish and Matt are thrilled with that. I want happy people and delighted clients."
One of Marsh's first jobs will be to lift the creative output of Patts in Sydney - widely believed to be lagging behind its Melbourne counterpart, and which has recently been behind work for the AFL, Schweppes and even the acclaimed VB "symphony" ad.
In his first book Fat Forty and Fired Marsh chronicled his sacking by D'Arcy; how he dealt with a serious medical illness and his decision to give up drinking, all while taking his family on a European tour with no prospects of a job at the end.
The book led to him being deluged with thousands of letters, which he used as the basis of his second book.
He is now in the midst of writing a third book on leadership.