Steve Back exits Ogilvy Australia’s CCO role
Ogilvy Australia’s Chief Creative Officer Steve Back is leaving the company after 18 months in the position. Back joined Ogilvy Australia in the newly-created national role in February 2013 from Ogilvy & Mather Singapore where he also held the position of Chief Creative Officer.
Ogilvy Australia’s CEO David Fox said Back had worked hard to strengthen the creative talent across the Ogilvy Australia group.
“Steve has helped to build creative capability across both offices leading to stronger creative collaboration between Sydney and Melbourne,” he explained.
“We have an incredible team of creatives both in Sydney and Melbourne who are now well-versed in taking an approach as one office where required. We feel confident that they can continue to produce outstanding creative work that works both for local and national clients under the guidance of each city’s respective creative leadership.”
52 Comments
Kidults did it.
Ouch. And right after he got the Melbourne office’s first ever lion wins at Cannes? Cold blooded.
Kidults was a finalist at Cannes. If you are going to point a finger…I’d say it was the chimp on a Segway.
This is just how it works…
Back to the future
That’s the easiest $50 I’ve ever made
Ever seen a wrecking ball keep the job?
What. A. Surprise.
Boris for CCO!
Now you can spend all your time on instagram
STW have done it again. They want the baby, but they don’t want the pain. Steve is a decent guy and like so many before him, deserves better.
Foxy putting broom through.. Steve a good guy but foxy wants ‘his’ team
Got to be the last chance surely?
Wake up and smell the chicken
Don’t know much about this dude but it pays to never forget the skills that got you in the game, or got you the promotion in the first place. I mean CCO? What exactly is that other than a title to justify a fuck load of cash that one is simply not probably worth.
@DON’T FORGET
CCO = the guy who made the decisions that turned Ogilvy’s creative department into a Cannes winning one. He was worth every cent.
Good morning bacon…Stop and smell the chicken…Kidults…enough said.
Agree with ‘someone who knows’.
proof again that being a successful CCO or ECD in this day and age requires a lot more than winning the odd bit of tin and bullying ideas through.
Campaign Brief could have written this article 18 months ago and saved it for its inevitable release.
Backy departs another Aussie agency. Yawn.
That sucks.
The Luis Suarez of Advertising…Barcalona is waiting!
@No, you don’t know much about this dude said:
Ogilvy won 8 Lions in the previous two years before Steve joined.
I know how you feel, best of luck Steve.
Clients don’t go to Ogilvy for award-winning creative. They go there because of relationships. Any strain on these relationships ultimately results in the loss of jobs.
Ogilvy has hired one of the nicest people in advertising to be the CEO. And I’m willing to bet that he will not put client relationships at risk for the sake of awards.
Sure, every now and then, some idiot upstairs decides that they want to “improve the work”, but this strategy will always fail as it’s not in the company’s DNA.
That’s why, for award-hungry ECDs, Ogilvy will always be a poisoned chalice.
SHUT YOUR NECKS!
Couldn’t see that one coming.
Massive loss. Say what you like about his methods, he was well respected, he was actually turning the place around, and was already getting results. He should have been given another 18months. Totally shortsighted.
You are a twit.
The very best CDs and ECDs (and Backy may well be one) take their clients with them on a journey. There need not be a “strain on … relationships” if this is done right.
If your strategy for getting work out is to crash or crash through (and I’m not saying it was Backy’s or anyone else’s because I don’t know), then you’re not really paying marketers or their brands their due.
It takes two to tango, and they need to be in step or the dance ends up shit.
I tend to agree strongly with @ Att:ECD’s.
He’s not a twit, 3:21. His take on this has a strong ring of truth, one which has been borne out time and time again.
The thing is, some agencies just don’t have the desire or the need to do good work.
The creation of advertising is an irritation which gets in the way of the actual purpose of these agencies, which is making money.
Good work is usually original. Original ideas scare the hell out of conservative clients. But conservative clients are exactly the sort of clients multinational agencies like Ogilvy attract. The agency is appointed on network grounds, not creative.
Every few years, somebody in the agency decides they’re going to ‘improve the work’, despite the clients preference for bland, international pattern material that’s pitched at the third world, or a similar local approach.
Commendable, but destined to cause massive problems, because the parties are at cross-purposes.
For my sins I worked at one of those multinational monoliths in Sydney in the 1980s during yet another ‘creative renaissance’ for the agency. I was recruited back to Oz from the other side of the world. I left the best agency in the world to work at the worst.
It inevitably ended in tears.
We had a saying then which is just as relevant today:
‘Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig.’
I think there’s something in that for all of us.
Massive loss.
If you truly believe that great work is always the result of the client and agency working in harmony, then you are the twit.
We all know that some of Sydney’s best recent work has resulted in the clients being “broken” and moving agencies as a result.
Backy is one of the best! Big big loss for Ogilvys.
don’t take it personally Backy, your one of how many senior creatives moved on this year already
What’s up with the fat and ominous posing PR shot? I’ve been helping Backy hone his ´moobs into a beautiful washboard chest and stomach of late. You should be using one of those pics
@ Old CD guy
I don’t think you can call Ogilvy in Australia one of those multi-nationals that only attracts clients on a network level. It’s some 70% STW owned. And doesn’t run like a TBWA or DDB in that regard (both fine creative networks respectively).
Steve was there to do an overhaul of the creative output. And for a suit led agency with clients that are used to that there was bound to be pain.
Massive pain.
Sure he lasted 18 months, but I think it will be fair to judge his efforts by what effect he’s had on the agency in another 18 months.
Best of luck to the crew still onboard HMAS Ogilvy.
Mistake.
It would have been a smarter move to drop the long serving politicians in the ranks and in their place put the kind of people who would support Back (not lobby against him).
Now what?
Singing pig. Gold.
Just put a suit in the role already..
‘Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig.’
Same thing could have been said about Mccaan hey?
Singing Pig? Description is 50% right.
You’re bang on.
The long serving politicians in that place run it, there are plenty of them.
And anybody who comes in and makes their life slightly difficult (i.e. tries to get them to do their jobs and get good work out ) gets shown the door.
There has never been support for great creative…and those who have supported it are long gone, in better agencies, doing better work.
Can’t wait to see which “suit” they replace him with as ECD.
There’s a big difference between McCann and Ogilvy Australia:
Ogilvy in Australia really has nothing to do with the Ogilvy global network. It’s an independent agency that answers to no-one, and exists mostly to do mediocre work on boring clients. It’s completely out of step with the creative ambitions of Ogilvy Worldwide.
McCann Australia is 100% part of a global network that is working hard to lift its game creatively.
So while the guys at McCann Oz have had the support and encouragement of the network to make good work, the creatives at Ogilvy in Australia are totally beholden to local management who simply want to make lots of money doing boring work for boring clients.
@Old CD Guy:
I think it’s been a while since you worked at a network agency? Things have changed over the last decade… while networks only concern is the bottom line, they’ve finally realised that great product actually makes them more money. Hence, they’re not the creative wastelands they once were. For an ambitious creative person who is at least semi-capable of acting like a grown-up, the networks aren’t a bad place to be.
You sound like the pig singing.
How about a comment from this author?
He called himself a ‘change monger’.
Because he’s constantly changing jobs?
He had nothing to do with the sharing can Coke work.
You need to build in a ‘danger money’ clause if you take a job here. Nobody in senior management lasts more than 1.5 -2 years.
They’re run more like a political party than a business. Take a gig there at your own peril.
Next!
I think we all wanted it to work. But he alienates people here and most every place he goes. The whole ****off attitude doesn’t work with anybody in the long run. You also have to go to client meetings. Not just bash up the account boys and hide in your room. There are more suitable people out there to hire for this position. People who are smart and people focused. So don’t feel bad, just move on as quietly as possible so you can use another agency as your stepping stone to whatever you like.
There’s a great book called Chimpanzee Politics that explains everything about these leadership struggles. It’s all about alliances if you want to lead a chimp pack.
Are stepping stone agencies supposed to be steps that go up or down? I forget.