Ogilvy hires Mark Sareff as national strategy chief to boost ‘thinking culture’

In the same week that Ogilvy ditched plans to create a national creative director role, Australia’s largest agency group has created a national head of strategy role.

The position has been filled by Mark Sareff, who joins from the now defunct Happy Soldiers with a brief to oversee strategy across Ogilvy Australia’s 24-strong strategy and planning team in Melbourne and Sydney.

Executive chairman Tom Moult said this week that he had abandoned the national chief creative officer role, which he had billed as ‘the most expansive creative role in Australian advertising’, because there was “too much ground to cover” across both offices.

On this appointment, he told Mumbrella: “A national ECD would be responsible for the creative output of every client in both agencies, which would be too hard. But in Mark’s role, he will come and go on stuff – he won’t have to work on everything all the time.”