Today we learned that Seth Solomons, the most senior member of this summer’s R/GA exodus, landed very softly with a gig as CEO of North America for WPP agency Wunderman.
AdAge writes that Solomons “left his role” at R/GA in July, which means Bob Greenberg told him personally that it was time to move on. This won’t be the first time that he has worked for Wunderman: he spent eight years there in the 90s, ascending to the SVP/account director role.
The WPP shop has made its share of changes over the past 12+ months, beginning with the appointment of former NBA\TBWA executive Jamie Gallo as president of its New York office.
New York-based EVP/CCO Nick Moore departed soon after Gallo got hired, eventually resurfacing as ECD at Publicis’ ROAR–and the agency finished its search for his successor by selecting Rosetta/JWT/FCB veteran Toni Hess last October.
Three months later, longtime WPP digital CEO Mark Read scored the global chief executive role–and Solomons will report directly to him in his new job.
Solomons’ appointment also follows that of new global CMO Jamie Gutfreund (formerly with Deep Focus) earlier this month and a new ECD for the U.K. and EMEA regions in the form of longtime RAPP global CCO Ian Haworth. As Gutfreund’s Adweek profile puts it, Wunderman aims to establish the sort of “clear industry reputation enjoyed by shops like Wieden + Kennedy or corporate siblings like Ogilvy & Mather.”
The statement from Solomons:
“I decided to return to Wunderman because it’s an exciting point in time in the evolution of a great agency. Mark has assembled a very strong team. There is depth at every level and I am proud to be a part of Wunderman once again.”
Sean Lyons returned to R/GA as its new U.S. president last month in a move that wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge until early fall–but someone wanted to facilitate that process, so here we are.