The last few months have been an absolute whirlwind of activity at the STW-owned agency, with a complete purge of the agency’s top brass and James ‘The Turnaround King’ Greet preparing to step in at the helm. The agency is currently in a state of limbo.
Chief executive Dan Johns was shown the door, joined by other senior staff including national digital director Ellie Rogers, who had been promoted to chief interactive officer less than a day earlier. Word on the street is there were two factions at the agency – words like transparency, digital channels and pace of change were bandied about – but were later rubbished by senior brass. Heads, nevertheless, rolled.
Enter Ikon co-founder Simon White as STW media chairman to pick up the pieces. White has said the clean-out had nothing to do with cutting costs or improving margins, and everything to do with redefining the agency model around innovation and creativity. And what better man for the job than James Greet, the agency leader who has been credited with steering OMD from woes to growth and who took Mindshare’s billings to new heights with major wins like Unilever and NAB. Will he be able to achieve the same results at Ikon? We wait, but no doubt Greet will most certainly enjoy the relative freedom of running a group where the faceless men and women in WPP control cannot dictate how often a country manager can sip tea.
Sourced from AdNews Agency Report Card, May 31 2013 edition.
What they say:
Ikon was founded in 1999 to service the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Over the last 11 years we have grown from a staff of eight to over 200 people in seven offices: Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Wellington, Auckland and Ikon3 in New York. We provide our clients with industry leading brand, consumer, strategic and implementation planning, end to end digital solutions and world class media buying.
