Given her record as the former CEO of Starcom MediaVest Canada, it would be safe to call Lauren Richards a “media expert.” Now it’s part of her official title as the new CEO of Media Experts, working from the Toronto office.
The independent media agency’s founder Mark Sherman will be stepping aside as CEO and taking on the role of executive chairman.
“I set out to find the best media person in Canada, and I put together a short list and there was only one person on it,” said Sherman, who stressed he is not taking a step back from the business.
“The greatest difficulty is that when you’re running the business day to day, it is hard to get your head out of the mud and look down the road,” he said. “You become reactive instead of proactive.”
Hiring Richards will enable him to take a longer-term view of where the media business is going and ensure Media Experts is out in front.
“I really believe that she will raise my game, and I will raise her game, and together we will raise the game of the agency.”
Richards, who stepped down from her post at SMG Canada Nov. 3 after four years at the helm, said it was Media Experts’ attitude and entrepreneurial spirit that attracted her to the job.
“It’s exciting and captures the best of both worlds in terms of my desire to be more entrepreneurial but without needing to start my own business,” she said. “I really like the agility of the operation in terms of adding new services and specialties that are right for this market. You can put it into place relatively quickly.”
Richards said she is most excited about the opportunities to develop new areas of business—such as content integration—that working for an independent shop affords.
“There are a number of specialties to the Canadian market that we’ll be talking about in the coming months that we think have some real potential,” she said. “It’s about more and more interesting, integrated plays with content and the closer you can get to that, the closer you are to the consumer. The fact we’re independent gives us such a wide range of partners to work with, particularly on the creative side. Sometimes creative partners can be worried about the connections you have when part of a network, whereas we’re not tied down with that.”
Adding Richards is the second major development for Media Experts in the last few months. The shop won media duties for Bell Canada in August.
