Michael Girgis has stepped down as president of Pattison Onestop.
His departure follows that of two other founding partners—director of communications Erin Fulton, who left in April, and vice-president Jake Neiman, who left mid-September.
Founding partners Ian Gadsby and Jeff Findlay, along with another partner, Dmitri Melamed, remain with the company.
Onestop started life as a thesis project at Ryerson University in 2000 and blossomed into a national digital out-of-home network incorporating transit, college/university, residential and retail networks. Pattison Outdoor Advertising acquired the former Onestop Media Group in March 2011. Rather than fold it into its existing operations, however, the out-of-home giant established it as a standalone unit and handed it responsibility for all of its indoor place-based products
Onestop’s most prominent platform is its screens located inside the Toronto Transit Commission’s subway system. It has become the standard for all of Pattison’s digital properties.
“Everyone aspires to build a company and be successful and have staff and make a living from it and be happy,” Girgis told Marketing. “The other extreme is you’re successful in actually building a brand that’s recognizable. Beyond being recognizable, and then being purchased by a very strong brand like Pattison and have that brand integrate your company into its operations, it’s amazing.”
Having successfully integrated all of the Pattison assets under the Onestop umbrella and launched a new online sales tool called the Ad Shop, Girgis said the time was right for him to move on.
“Once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur,” he said. “You’re either a builder or an operator, and we’re builders.”
For now, Girgis is content to head up what he jokingly referred to as Girgis Fulton Enterprises, which also includes their 13-year-old daughter and a 17-month-old son. (Girgis is married to Fulton.)
While Girgis said he is unsure about his next project, he said it would continue to focus on what he called the “media innovation space” with an emphasis on what he called “game-changing” products and service.
“This is an exciting time to be in the media space,” he said. “There’s so much going on and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. It’s going to be interesting to watch the industry from the outside looking in for a while.”
The new venture will likely have a sales and marketing focus, said Girgis, who co-chaired Marketing’s 2010 Media Innovation Awards. “It would be silly for us not to stay in the space we’ve invested so much time in,” he said. “To me the media innovation landscape is in its most exciting time.”
Pattison CEO Randy Otto said Girgis would be “missed by all of us at Pattison Onestop,” but would not comment on replacing the three departing founders.
