James Greet joins full service agency Cummins & Partners to lead major media push
Former Ikon CEO James Greet is joining Cummins & Partners to lead a major media push for the full service agency.
Greet, who left Ikon last January, will take up the national role of chief media officer, based in its Sydney office.
While the independent agency, which has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia, has won some significant clients for its creative business it has struggled to land the large accounts for the media side.
That’s big.
Another great hire well done guys !
Greet and Ferrier. A match made in heaven!
CMO Greet! Boom
Fantastic hire. Congrats!
I find genuinely interesting to observe / try to understand when and where a reputation is made and how and when it can change.
“Greet made a reputation as a change specialist in agencies after arriving in Australia in 2002 and helping to turn around an ailing OMD as CEO, before moving to Mindshare in 2010 where he repeated the trick. He joined Ikon in 2013 after the sudden exit of the management team, but departed 18-months later”
Effectively James’ stint as CEO of Ikon a historically independent agency was unsuccessful. Faced with a lack of global support in terms of processes and hovering too far above the clients it didn’t work out for him. Certain places you cannot apply a cookie cutter approach to – Ikon was one such place.
I hope that James is flexible enough to see that going in at Cummings. I wish him the best, genuinely.
Hi Bobby T I agree. Chuck in Cummins Muddle martin Shriber and Jaffel and more and it’s quite steam.
I’m baffled how this article fails to mention the account losses under Greet’s leadership at Ikon. So in 18 months they lost Vodafone, Coke, Diageo, Caltex, and Goodman Fielder – combined $74m in billings according to Mumbrella. Not to mention, Ikon almost lost their founding client of 15 years, the Commonwealth Bank, had Pat Crowley not returned.
“……to find a better way for clients….” Let’s hope Cummins & Partners did a few client reference checks. “Change specialist” – not a positive one in his last role. Hope he gets a few wins in this gig.
That old saying, “You’re only as good as your last success…..” How did you fail to acknowledge that in your article? In the 18 months that James Greet was CEO at Ikon they successfully lost 5 major accounts, worth almost $75m. And they would have lost CBA if Pat Crowley didn’t come back to save it.
That’s a change specialist alright.
What amazes me is how top heavy Cummins & P is becoming. Is this another attempt to razzle & dazzle their already failing media department? Do they even have media clients? I do wonder…
Up until the 1980’s Media agencies were a part of Ad agencies and the $ spend on purchasing Media was through the roof, much like it is today.
I wasn’t working in Ad agencies in the 80’s but from what I’ve heard it was pretty
crazy times and boozy lunches. Much like the stereotypes depicted on MAD MEN.
Harold Mitchell was one of the first pioneers to move Media out of the Ad agencies
and essentially created his own very wealth and powerful industry.
This is a big move from C&P and I wish them all the luck in doing so.
I’d bet that other Ad agencies would be interested in the outcome
as it would be an enormous revenue stream for Ad agencies around Australia.
However they will have to take on the Media Agencies and that is going to be a
very interesting fight.
Stay tuned…