If you want to get the best CEO or ECD for your agency, you don’t go around posting the job on Seek. Instead, you look to a small, select cabal of recruiters who go around placing the best people in the best companies in adland.
They’re not quite the smoke-filled backroom operators of yesteryear but this influential 11 keep a slightly lower profile than the people they place in their roles. That hasn’t made our job the easiest, but we’ve leaned heavily on our friends and confidants in the industry to give us a steer on who is the best — though whittling this down to the list below took some doing.
Every week on B&T, we take a different role within adland and tell you who are the 10 Best of the Best at it. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be revealing the best people in these disciplines: Public Relations – Consumer, Strategist – Media, Project Manager, Mentor, Developer, Casting Director, Industry Association Chief, Experiential Producer, Social Change Maker, Journalist, HR, Planning Director – Media, and Marketer.
But those are in the weeks to come. For now, here are the top 10 recruiters in advertising…
10. Belinda Lodge – founder and CEO, iPopulate
Lodge founded and has been running iPopulate for some 14 years now. The firm has been dedicated to finding the right talent to help adland fill their roles quickly and easily.
Her fun and slightly left-field approach to LinkedIn job announcements that feature all manner of cute little critters keep potential candidates engaged and on the hook waiting for their next big gig. Plus, while she’s not placing the best people in the best roles, Lodge manages to be the deputy chair of the Industry Advisory Committee at RMIT University.
9. Ryan Kelly – founder and CEO, Creative Natives
Melbourne-based Kelly founded Creative Natives just four years ago, making his business a fair bit newer than some of the others on this list, but no less impactful. Specialising within the creative, digital and marketing sectors, Kelly said that his firm places the best with the best roles in adland “by listening, being nice and giving a shit” — a refreshingly simple and honest take on recruitment, we’re sure you’ll agree.
Plus, the Creative Natives newsletter puts the best adland talent front and centre in the bosses’ inboxes. A great way to cut out the middleman or, indeed, woman.
8. Dene Gambotto – managing director, iknowho
Gambotto (née Brentnall), has been leading the iknowho team for more than 15 years and, with the team all having marketing backgrounds themselves, it’s no wonder that she has been able to place talent at some of the biggest brands in the world and Australia, including Apple, Nickelodeon, Woolworths, Expedia and The Sydney Opera House.
In fact, Gambotto and the iknowho team’s experience helped it land the Best Small Agency for Candidate Experience gong at the 2022/23 Recruiter Insider awards. And, frankly, a recruiter’s job is all about the candidates, anyway.
7. Nick Williams – founding partner, Williams International
With a strong background in advertising himself, with group account director roles within the Leo Burnett network in the London and Sydney offices but also working with the agency’s teams around the world, it’s no surprise that Williams has gone on to great things in the world of creative recruitment.
One particular standout was placing Ryan Menezes as the chief technology and transformation officer of GroupM three years ago after a “long and complex search” leading to a “fantastic end result.” Menezes, if you’re wondering, became the CEO of GroupM Nexus earlier this year. A fantastic result, indeed.
6. Anna O’Dea – founder, Agency Iceberg
Based out of Melbourne’s Prahran suburb, O’Dea’s Agency Iceberg recruits exclusively for marketing, communications, PR, digital, experiential and advertising roles and from C-suite to co-ordinator roles. Having been in business for nearly a decade, we’d reckon that Agency Iceberg is more than doing alright for itself.
But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for O’Dea. She is a regular public speaker and trusted media authority on all workplace matters from culture, diversity and inclusion to equal opportunity, bullying and LGBTQI advocacy. What’s more, she’s a regular judge for the B&T 30 Under 30 and Women in Media awards!
5. James Burke – partner – consumer and digital technology, Carlyle Kingswood Global
Burke’s specialism in the world of technology makes him an invaluable asset for companies in the world of marketing today. Focusing on the big, meaty roles within tech-forward businesses such as country managers, CEOs, CIOs, CTOs and CDOs among others, Burke’s knowledge in the sector — not to mention the performance of his own ventures — shows why he is easily one of the most important men in media today.
4. Courtney Robertson and Sarah Jones – directors, The Human Co
With big-time HR roles at Leo Burnett, Publicis Groupe, VMLY&R and Clemenger, Leo Burnett (again) and M&C Saatchi Group is it any wonder that Robertson and Jones, respectively, have built such a strong business with The Human Co in less than a year?
The firm doesn’t simply place people, either. Instead, Robertson and Jones consult on organisation design, DE&I, performance management and L&D to help adland make the most of its talent. They’re also regularly involved in industry initiatives from talking to D&AD Shift participants to lecturing on panels for the AWARD School with fellow Best of the Best list member Esther Clerehan.
3. Lea Walker – founder, Mrs Walker
After almost 15 years in the creative biz, rising through the ranks at from account executive to group account director at Leo Burnett in Sydney and Chicago and then from group account director to head of account management at Fallon London, Walker made the switch to recruitment in 2011 with Hourigan International (yes, you’ll see that name again soon).
Her talents were spotted very quickly. “After accidentally selling my creative husband to Wieden + Kennedy,” she said, “they were kind enough to give me a job too.” We’re not convinced it was kindness on W+K Portland’s part because, in a year, the storied creative shop promoted her from global creative recruiter to director of recruitment. Returning to Sydney in April 2019, she spent four years as the talent partner with Bear Meets Eagle on Fire and founded her Mrs Walker consultancy.
2. Karen Taylor – CEO, Hourigan International
If you want to find a creative leader, you go to Karen Taylor. Managing partner of Hourigan International for nearly 15 years and the CEO for just over 12 months now, Taylor has placed some of the biggest people in the biggest roles in Australia.
In just the last six months, she and the Houirgan team helped find a new role in Australia for Michelle Klein, formerly Meta’s US vice president of global business and product marketing. Klein had been part of Hourigan’s “Talent Tribe” for the past decade and now she’s the chief customer and marketing officer of IAG. That’s some going.
1. Esther Clerehan – founder and CEO, CLEREHAN
If Taylor and Hourigan International are great, Clerehan is iconic. She has been operating in the creative industries for more than three decades after starting out as a teenager at Ogilvy Melbourne. After a stop-off at Apple International, being headhunted by the late Claire Worthington — the “iconic grand dame of headhunters” — she founded CLEREHAN in 1993.
We’d say the rest is history but that would do Clerehan a disservice. Starting, the firm with $400 in the bank and a Motorola phone that she had borrowed $1,200 to buy, CLEREHAN has turned into the most important recruitment business in adland. For example, she placed then 26-year-old David Droga at Saatchi Asia as regional ECD and placed Ned McNeilage and Linda Knight at Wieden + Kennedy in 1994 — the shop’s first international creative hires. And she’s the OG mentor and meddler at The Aunties. Oh, and she was on B&T‘s Women in Media Power List — again — this year.
