As Publicis Groupe continues to roll out a sweeping global restructuring of its network of communications agencies, three Canadians have been given expanded North American responsibilities.
Andrew Bruce, has been named CEO of Publicis Communications for North America, while Leo Burnett’s Judy John has been appointed chief creative officer and Brent Nelsen chief strategy officer for Leo Burnett North America. Both will retain their Leo Burnett Toronto duties.
The changes are part of an overhaul that began nine months ago when Publicis announced it would “radically modify its business model.” The radical modifications involved removing barriers between agencies across the network and reorganizing all the brands into four “solutions hubs” including Publicis Communications. Within that hub sits Publicis, MSL, Nurun, Saatch & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and BBH. “Basically what it means is I’m responsible for the creative agencies in North America, the performance and strategic direction of them,” said Bruce. “I guess I’m just the throat to choke.”
Bruce was previously CEO of Publicis Canada before moving to New York as chief executive for the agency brand in both Canada and the U.S. in late 2013.
Publicis Communications was created to improve service to existing clients and create a more attractive proposition to prospective clients by closely aligning talent and expertise across the Publicis network regardless of borders and geography, said Bruce. (The other Publicis “solutions hubs” include Publicis Media, Publicis.Sapient and Publicis Healthcare.)
“We continue to protect the individual creative brands and their unique culture and what they stand for, and then we look for areas to grow through collaboration wherever possible,” he said. “The big change for me is I’ve spent 18 years obsessed about Publicis Worldwide [the agency], but now I have an interest in all of the assets [within the Publicis network] and how they perform and how they grow,” he said.
Under this model, staff from different agencies can work together on any client so long as there is no conflicts, he said. That kind of collaboration hasn’t happened very much in Canada yet, but it will, he said, either for Canadian clients or on more assignments in the U.S.
Leo Burnett Toronto hasn’t tackled any creative briefs with other Publicis agencies yet, but the promotion of John and Nelson does reinforce the increasingly borderless approach within Publicis’s agencies.
“A lot of our work has been picked up in different markets around the world,” said John. The promotion for her and Nelson, and any increased requests for work from the Toronto office, is in recognition of how much Leo Burnett Toronto has contributed to the Leo network.
It’s what Leo Burnett’s global CCO Mark Tutssel calls “creativity without borders,” with offices across markets working on assignments together. For example, John was the creative director on “Like A Girl” though the assignment officially resided with the Chicago office.
The pair will now officially oversee creative and strategy for North America, but John stressed they would stay in Toronto and remain focused on Canada—“That is our main priority,” she said. “Our initial focus will be helping on business and creative transformations…. We can’t get involved in everything, it would be impossible,” she said.
“The good news is with this announcement formalizing what we do, the network will be investing more in our office,” she said. That will mean additional resources at all levels of the organization to increase the capacity of the office while also ensuring the executive team can take on whatever additional work will arise while Brent and John are focused on assignments being run out of other offices.
She said the ramp up of new work for the Toronto office will be done in a measured way to ensure it does not compromise what they are doing for their existing clients in Canada. “We are being very cautious,” she said.
While Leo Burnett hasn’t worked much with other Publicis Communications agencies—Nelson and the strategy team did work on one Publicis Commuincations project earlier this year for P&G—John said there had been concerted effort by Publicis to bring the agencies closer together.
“One thing we talk about is this power of one,” she said. “Having the opportunity to work with a lot more resources from sister agencies within the group.” A Publicis meeting last week brought together the leads from different offices and brands. Just by meeting and having dinner with one another new possibilities start to emerge, she said. “You get to know each other, what we can do and how we help one another.”
