Change is afoot at dentsu with the holding company undergoing a raft of significant changes within the space of a week – some by design and some without any choice.
Lead image: Dentsu Creative CCO Ben Coulson.
Dentsu’s Carat media agency has seen its Sydney managing director, Lauren Small, depart for Optus where she will be the telco’s senior director of media and operations.
Small had been with Carat for three years after spending almost a decade at Publicis-owned media shops Starcom and Spark Foundry.
“Lauren has been a phenomenal leader of Carat NSW in what has been a tremendously difficult few years for our broader industry. We are thrilled for her to be joining such a wonderful company like Optus, and wish her the very best of luck. We will be announcing a new MD in the coming weeks,” Danny Bass, CEO of Dentsu Media ANZ, told B&T.
“I have led the Carat NSW team for the past three years, through a challenging period for the industry. It has been a great experience leading such an excellent team, but I am excited to join Optus and begin the next phase of my career. I will miss my talented colleagues and fantastic clients, but I wish my Carat family the very best as they continue to grow and do amazing things,” Small added.
The next big change is that Ben Coulson, former chief creative officer (CCO) of HERO/McCann, Clemenger BBDO, VMLY&R, and George Patterson, has joined as Dentsu Creative’s CCO.
Coulson comes in to replace Mandie van der Merwe and Avish Gordhan, the former joint CCOs, who departed for Saatchi & Saatchi last week.
Coulson has worked on some of the most important brands in Australia such as Tourism Australia, Telstra, Qantas, Toyota and Cadbury and has picked up Cannes and D&AD Agency of the Year titles, won ANZ Network of the Year at Cannes and Spikes, and most awarded agency in APAC at the One Show. He’s also managed to scoop some B&T Agency of the Year gongs, to boot.
Coulson will start in December and report to Dentsu Creative CEO Kirsty Muddle.
“Dentsu has the capability to deliver creativity well beyond traditional methods. They are quietly assembling a squad of very talented people, and the global network is catching fire (second in APAC on the CB list last week). All compelling reasons for me to crash this party” said Coulson.
Muddle added: “Ben will accelerate our agenda to make great work; work that demonstrates what dentsu can do for brands and businesses when we harness all of our capability, media, experience, technology, data, and gaming. He has the experience and credentials to get us there.”
The final, and more unfortunate change, is several redundancies following a restructure. B&T understands that only a single role has been impacted at Carat and that at least 15 roles might be affected across the business. However, as many as 40 might be set to depart, according to some reports.
Dentsu ANZ CEO Patricio De Matteis blamed macroeconomic conditions for these most recent round of job losses.
“Like many other businesses, we’re not immune to the macro-economic situation that we all currently live in and we do need to address this so we’re coming out the other side stronger. This has unfortunately meant that we’ve seen some people impacts, which any leader will know is never an easy decision to make” he said.
Earlier this week, Dentsu Creative enlisted the services of DDB’s Katie Firth to be its Melbourne managing director, as well.
Dentsu is not alone in its suffering. Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital made some 500 layoffs and said more were to follow with its Asia Pacific division being hit the hardest.
