Leo Burnett commences global search for a replacement for Singapore CCO Tim Green

Campaign Brief Exclusive: Leo Burnett’s global chief creative officer Mark Tutssel has commenced a global search for a replacement for current Singapore creative head, Tim Green (left), who is returning to Australia.

Tutssel told Campaign Brief Asia he is currently in the process of talking to various world class creative leaders about getting them to join the network in Singapore.

“Singapore is a very important market for us – it’s the business capital of Asia Pacific,” said Tutssel. “We are going to build a very strong business out of there.”

In May this year Green was elevated from ECD to chief creative officer of the Singapore agency and global creative director on SKII. The move also saw Clarence Chiew join the agency from Iris Singapore as executive creative director. Green joined Leo Burnett Singapore from their Sydney office in April 2013. He replaced previous ECD Ted Lim, who had resigned to join Dentsu Asia as their chief creative officer for Asia.

“Tim has done a very, very good job for us in Singapore and for personal reasons he’s leaving to return to Australia. It didn’t work out and I understand why he wants to return to Australia,” said Tutssel.

“Tim’s an amazingly talented man. He has a great eye for creativity. He’s a gentleman and he’s one of the great talents to emerge out of Australia. We are slowly working towards a different model of working at Leo Burnett and I call it “Creativity without borders”. I look at the talent we have and not the borders of where they work and we will be looking to replace Tim with another world class talent who can work across borders.”

Tutssel (left) acknowledges that Singapore is historically is a difficult place for agencies to succeed.

“I think the Singapore industry in general has not lived up to the potential. If you look at the work of some of the bigger agencies and you drill a bit deeper it’s has not lived up to the potential it should have. There’s lots of reasons why that ambition hasn’t been realised. It’s through no lack of trying. It’s through no lack of talent. It just hasn’t happened.”