Nick Bell, Executive Creative Director at JWT, has been fired.
At first sight this is insane. JWT have done better work under him than EVER before. Really great campaigns for Golden Wonder, Smirnoff, Vodafone and others. They placed seventh in the Gunn Report, having never previously featured on it before.
What more is a creative director supposed to do?
Then again, they did lose £150 million worth of business on his watch.
The truth is, JWT has never been about great work. It's about solid work. They probably told him they wanted great work. But they didn't.
Today also came the announcement that Mother is losing the Egg account.
This, I think, is a terrible mistake.
Clients go to Mother to get brilliant work. And Egg got brilliant work. (See below). Modern, relevant, and wonderfully engaging. What more is an agency supposed to do?
The Nick Bell thing is understandable. But Mother do not deserve to lose Egg.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Bell, Hamsters, Axed
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Is that true??
Nick Bell is being made a scapegoat for JWT's losses when people like Craig Davis and Bob Jeffrey should be the ones to go. JWT London is the creative flagship of the network and that's down to Nick. What have these two poseurs achieved around the rest of the network?
Did the work work? I absolutely love the Smirnoff work, but consumers haven't a clue why distillation is better. Every time they try and describe it to people, they get put off by the thuought of it going through dirty charcoal.Brilliant work? Yes. But wrong brief. Who's responsibilty is that? While I reject the idea that strategy is the planners job,while exucution is down to creatives,I bet that's what happens at a dinosaur like JWT.
Most of the people from JWT's creative department in London came there to with Nick. Now he's gone.
Can they continue doing such good work without a creative leader such as Nick? I doubt it. Maybe he was too expensive for JWT after loosing all these billings...
Erm... as much as I like and admire Nick the London office is far from JWT's creative flagship. Brazil, Thailand and India all contribute more in terms of consistent quality and awards.
Losing Nick isn't good for JWT - but take off the blinkers regarding London as the centre of the creative renaissance
You're given a massive budget to bring in the best creatives you can. You cherry pick the best briefs for them to work on. The management are right behind you and force the clients to buy the work.
You manage to pick up the odd silver here and there over a three year period.
What exactly has Nick managed to achieve without his former partner?
Craig 'the copywriter' Davis strikes again: finding a scapegoat for his own shortcomings. Keep the serious face on, Craig, and you might just be able to keep on fooling 'em for a while longer.
The word is that Jeffrey and Davis are under scrutiny as JWT crashes from crisis to crisis. Hopefully it's only a matter of time before these two clowns get the axe and we can get back to being a properly run network.
Post a Comment