John Crean, the national managing partner at National Public Relations since 1995, is leaving the firm at the end of the year.
Crean says he will be pursuing a new opportunity that he will announce in the new year.
“It’s been a great, great ride at a really unique Canadian success story,” says the Toronto-based Crean.
“There’s no firm in Canada, nor has there ever been, like National,” he says, of the company founded by the late Luc Beauregard in 1976 that grew to become the country’s largest PR firm. “It’s really now the right time for me to try something new.”
Crean is “a very important part, and has been for a long time, of the culture. It’s sad to see him go,” says Rick Murray, managing partner and chief digital strategist at National Public Relations in Toronto.
“You never like to lose anybody senior,” Murray adds. “But, the reality is that we’re a big company with a lot of leadership talent across the organization,” including in Toronto which has “staffed up pretty significantly” over the past year. “You don’t like to lose him, but you do and you move on.” No longer having him at the firm “will be felt more emotionally than financially.”
Murray says there are no plans to find a replacement for Crean. “That’s actually a call that Jean-Pierre Vasseur (president and CEO of Res Publica Consulting Group, the Montreal-based holding company that owns National), would have to make, but my sense is that, at least at the current time, there’s no plans to replace him at all.”
Crean, who is a member of National’s operations committee, says he is proud of several accomplishments during his career at the firm. These include being the national managing partner of Cohn & Wolfe (which is also owned by Res Publica) from 2003 to 2005, being part of National’s original healthcare consulting practice and seeing the company expand in Toronto and across Canada through organic growth and acquisitions.
Crean began his career at National in 1992 as a senior consultant and then left for a one year stint as vice-president at Veritas Communications before returning.
“National’s in a great spot. It’s in great hands with some great new leaders in offices across the country,” he says. “It really feels like if I was to try something new and just try a new venture in a new line of consulting, that this would be the right time.”
An “Up Close and Personal” blog item about Crean on National’s website last month notes he is “someone who is certainly not afraid to take risks.” That makes it “pretty fitting that the reality TV show our national managing partner would like to be on is Survivor. John Crean doesn’t just think boldly, he also lives boldly!”
