Jean-Sébastien Monty
Jean-Sébastien Monty has become managing director of Bleublancrouge in Montreal, but is hanging on to his other day job.
Monty remains president and partner of U92 (formerly Uranium Interactive) in Montreal, which works primarily on digital platforms and ecommerce. Monty, who joined U92 in 2013, also co-founded Cloudraker, but sold his share to his co-founding partner two years ago.
At Bleublancrouge, he replaces Bernard Asselin, who has become chief marketing officer of the Montreal Alouettes. Bleublancrouge will continue to be the agency of record for the Alouettes.
Monty and Asselin have been working side-by-side for almost two months and will continue to do so for another six weeks.
The new job gives Monty the opportunity to work again with Bleublancrouge senior associate and CEO Sébastien Fauré, with whom he worked in the 1990s, and partner and head of creative thinking Gaëtan Namouric.
Monty said he told Bleublancrouge he would take the new job as long as he could hang on at U92. Both agencies and clients were onboard with the idea. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with two great teams on different types of clients, totally different types of mandates,” said Monty.
Monty said there is no exclusivity deal between the agencies – U92 clients will be presented to Bleublancrouge if it makes sense to the client and vice-versa.
He said it should be possible to divide his time between Bleublancrouge, which has about 90 employees, and U92, which has about 25 or so at U92. “Someone who’s general manager of a 200, 300 person agency can do it, so I can do it as well,” he said. “It’s just putting in the right tool and processes in both and making sure the clients are on board and that they like the transition. If you’ve got those two ingredients, it’s not an issue.”
Monty plans to divide his time between offices in downtown and Old Montreal, dedicating fixed days to each agency. “It’s not as sexy as saying I’ve got two offices, one in Montreal, one in New York,” he admitted.
