Ogilvy Australia executive chairman Tom Moult has made sweeping changes to its Sydney and Melbourne offices, including the elevation of Andrew Baxter to national CEO.
Sydney executive creative director Chris Ford is to leave the agency, returning to San Francisco for family reasons. Rather than replacing Ford, Moult is looking to appoint a national chief creative officer, responsible for creative outputs out of both offices.
The Melbourne executive creative director position was vacated earlier this month by Michael Knox, who joined Grey Melbourne.
Moult is consolidating the two agencies. Baxter, who has experience in both Sydney and Melbourne markets, will take on the national role immediately and will oversee all Ogilvy agencies except Ogilvy PR. He was previously Melbourne CEO.
There will be no direct replacement in the Melbourne office, however, Michael McEwan, Nick Muncaster and Andrew Egan will take on daily operations duties as joint managing partners.
Moult said Baxter's promotion will "allow greater collaboration between the two offices, and provide clients with custom-built teams, the broadest range of disciplines and the most integrated solutions."
Sydney chief executive Stuart O'Brien will become national creative strategy director, as well as explore the creation of Ogilvy consulting services which have already been launched in other markets.
Moult said: "Stuart O'Brien has been an outstanding chief executive and takes on this new role with our blessing and best wishes. His passion is with solving business problems for clients, and looking for new service offerings, and his new role will allow him to focus on this."
Penny Davy has been elevated to managing directors of both Sydney and Melbourne offices of Neo@Ogilvy while Brian Merrifield has been promoted to digital creative director and Damian Damjanovski to head of digital planning at Ogilvy Sydney.
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