James Wright, CEO of Havas Creative Network, spoke to AdNews about his return to Australia and how he plans to reinvigorate his heritage agency.
“We've been hiding our light a little bit and we'd like to up the profile of the agency,” Wright told AdNews.
Wright, who helped launch Havas’ PR arm Red agency in Sydney, is back after a five year stint in New York where he took the brand global.
As global CEO over the last five years, Wright has expanded Red Havas into 14 markets with 24 offices and more expected in the next 12 months.
However, the Sydney location seems to have been neglected.
“I've got the global markets, particularly in the PR group, humming along very well and I felt now is a good time to put the mojo into our Australian Village," Wright said.
“We are looking to strengthen the team in Red Havas and develop our creative communications, which we've got a proud history of, but we need to continue to evolve that to stay at the top.
“Australia is where the brand started - so it's important we have a strong heritage here.
“We still have a very healthy agency but I think there's work we can do to improve its creative output. It's always been a strong market for us creatively, we want to make sure that that continues.
“We still have incredible clients here and many of them were the clients that I had been involved in before I left the market in 2018.
“But you’ve constantly got to be thinking about where the market is moving to be a leader. We need to be out front and leading the market again.”
Even though Wright’s move home was made official yesterday, he has been looking after the Havas creative group in Australia for a little while and was the one to hire Gayle While.
Also made official yesterday, While has moved from Dentsu to replace Laura Aldington as CEO of Host/Havas after Aldington earlier this month announced her departure with almost 16 years at the agency.
“Bringing somebody of Gayle’s stature to the agency is a good indication of the investment that we want to make into this market,” Wright said.
“Laura will always be a massive part of the history of Host/Havas and is still involved in the agency for a few weeks helping with Gayle’s transition.”
However, the restructuring at Havas is far from over as more leadership changes are on the horizon.
“We will announce a few leadership changes in the next few weeks, but they're not to do with the media agency, obviously we will be looking at the leadership of Red.
“All these [upcoming] changes are something we’ve been planning for a while - there’s a game plan.”
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