TBWA regional president resigns as new Oceania structure lands
TBWA regional president and CEO Paul Bradbury has resigned from the agency just weeks after the launch of the new Omnicom Oceania structure.
TBWA president and regional chief executive officer Paul Bradbury has resigned from the business after 19 years.
Mr Bradbury’s resignation comes just weeks after the arrival of TBWA parent company Omnicom’s new Oceania boss Nick Garrett, who assumed the newly created role on 1 July.
As revealed by The Australian last month, Mr Garrett has been appointed to oversee the Australian and New Zealand global advertising group’s creative and media businesses, under a new regional management structure.
According to industry sources, Mr Bradbury’s resignation was due to differences of opinion regarding Mr Garrett’s role and his plans for the Omnicom Advertising Group and Omnicom Media Group businesses in the region.
The departure serves a blow to the TBWA brand, which has maintained a strong and stable presence in the ANZ markets largely due to Mr Bradbury’s tenure at the helm.
He has been credited as the driving force behind the agency’s Telstra account win and the creation and implementation of the +61 agency model in partnership with Bear Meets Eagle On Fire and OMD. TBWA ANZ has bolstered revenues by 30 per cent in the last year, buoyed by recent accounts wins including Australian Defence Force Recruiting (DFR) and Tourism New Zealand’s global brand account.
In addition to the three TBWA offices, Mr Bradbury oversaw TBWA Media Arts Lab, Eleven, Fleishman Hillard, Fabric, Bolt, and TBWA Sustain and he established strong agency teams across TBWA’s Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland offices, significantly Melbourne CEO Kimberlee Wells, who is expected to assume the ANZ CEO role to replace Mr Bradbury.
TBWA has been the shining light within the Omnicom stable of creative agencies, following the recent merger of the Clemenger BBDO agencies, which triggered a wave of senior leadership departures, and the recent management changes at DDB, which also lost two of its longest serving clients, McDonald’s and Westpac last year.
Mr Bradbury’s departure will further fuel industry speculation regarding future plans for the Omnicom Oceania agencies, particularly ahead of the Omnicom and IPG merger, which was approved by the ACCC this month.
Mr Garrett’s return to Omnicom was officially confirmed today in an email sent to all local staff, however, his appointment had been an open secret throughout the advertising industry for months since he left his role as the global chief marketing officer for Deloitte Digital. Prior to this, he served as CEO for both the Colenso BBDO and Clemenger BBDO agencies, in addition to working for TBWA.
The new Omnicom Oceania management structure brings the holding company in line with rival groups, such as Publicis Groupe, which is led locally by CEO Michael Rebelo, Dentsu ANZ, which is led by CEO Patricio De Matteis, and Havas, which this month also adopted a similar structure appointing James Wright as group CEO for ANZ.
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