Former Palace CCO Reed Collins takes the chief creative officer role at Ogilvy Group in Hong Kong

UPDATED AND EXCLUSIVE – Further to our earlier report, CB can confirm that former Campaign Palace national creative director Reed Collins has taken the chief creative officer role at Ogilvy Group Hong Kong.

Collins departed The Palace soon after it morphed into JWT Sydney back in November.

Collins actually started his stellar 15 career career in the darkroom at Campaign Brief in Perth in the early 90s. Collins then had casual stints at Shout and JMA Ogilvy & Mather in Perth.

He then headed east and got his first break at Mojo in Sydney. When Hunt Lascaris\TBWA Johannesburg founder John Hunt paid a visit to Australia in the mid 90s, Collins (with then partner Richard Bullock, also ex Perth) pestered him for a job and weeks later the pair headed to South Africa – where they first met Tony Granger, then the agency’s creative director.

After a few years in SA, the pair headed to Lowe Howard-Spink London and Cliff Freeman & Partners New York, before Bullock headed to 180 Amsterdam (he’s now directing with Hungryman & Prodigy, spending half the year in South Africa, the other half in Perth) and Collins to Leo Burnett Chicago, where he since has risen to executive creative director.

Among other awards in his career, Collins won a Gold Lion at Cannes in 2001 while at Cliff Freeman & Partners, New York for the brilliant Fox Sports campaign, and a Bronze Lion in 2007 for the hilarious Altoids campaign via Leo Burnett, Chicago.

Collins has won every international award several times over, across a wide range of categories, including Cannes and One Show Gold, One Show Best of Show and D&AD pencils. Collins was the most awarded creative in the world for his Fox Sports campaign, according to 2001 Gunn Report. In addition, he has work displayed in the permanent collection at Museum of Modern Art in NYC.