Christopher Andrews and Ron Smrczek have joined The & Partnership as president and executive creative director, respectively, and will lead the two-year-old agency’s Canadian operations.
Ron Smrczek, Andrew Bailey and Christopher Andrews
Both are former executives at Taxi, once agency of record for Telus, which is now The & Partnership’s key Canadian account.
After winning Telus in June 2014 without a Canadian executive team in place, the agency had put its senior-most team on the account (namely North American CEO Andrew Bailey and Micky Tudor, based in New York and London, U.K., respectively), and served it across the agency’s 80 staffers in three Canadian offices.
“The people who pitched the business were the ones who on-boarded it and have been driving it day-to-day. That was a big commitment that we felt was only right to make given the leap of faith that Telus took,” Bailey told Marketing.
While Bailey and Tudor will remain involved, “it’s now time to put a day-to-day team in place to run the business,” Bailey said.
Andrews arrives from Leo Burnett where, as executive vice-president and global account director in its Chicago office, he led the agency’s Coca-cola account, among others.
Smrczek arrives from Zulu Alpha Kilo where he served as ECD and with a wealth of client experience including Canadian Tire, Molson-Coors and Coke.
Bailey said the Canadian arm of The & Partnership has been focused on serving Telus primarily and has not actively been pursuing new business, but pitching new clients will likely become part of Andrews and Smrczek’s mandate in the new year.
