Taxi is putting Mike Leslie in charge of its English Canadian operations following nine years with the company and responsibility for long-term accounts such as one-time client Telus, the company said Monday.
Leslie will report to Taxi’s CEO Rob Guenette. Prior to his current appointment, Leslie was general manager of the shop’s Vancouver operations, and under his leadership won clients such as Vancouver International Airport.
In an interview with Marketing, Guenette cited Leslie’s success in Vancouver and his long track record with Telus as factors in choosing him for the job and suggested Taxi would continue to develop talent from within the agency’s own talent pool.
“He knows the community coast to coast, he knows the offices. I know he knows the complexities,” he said. “He’s done all the jobs. He has all the prerequisites . . . as we promote people like Mike Leslie, there’s less client disruption, less disrupton to the culture, less disruption internally with the employees.”
Though Taxi ended its 18-year relationship with Telus when the account moved over to The&Partnership and Vision7 in 2014, the company resurfaced in the telecom space by winning Rogers‘ Fido business from DentuBos following a competitive review the following year. Shortly after the Telus decision, however, Taxi went through several management changes including the departure of former president Nancy Beattie.
“[Telus] was giant piece of business for us. I made a choice at that time not to replace the president,” Guenette said, adding it was particularly challenging given the time he spends in the U.S. “We wanted to return to financial health. A year and a half later, now we need some local leadership.”
Like many other firms going through strategic reviews from their clients, Guenette said Taxi was trying to respond to increased demands of what an agency should be and what it can offer.
“First – and we learned this probably the hard way like everybody else – we have to be a lot more lean, a lot more agile than we were, say, 10 years ago or five years ago. The time to decisions, time to resources, time to solutions have to be a lot quicker,” he said. “The other way [to respond to industry challenges] is just making sure we tap into our broader resource pool at WPP and a lot of the companies in the Y&R group.”
Guenette said Taxi would be making a similar announcement around the leadership of the firm’s French Canadian operation later this week.
