Executive Creative Directors Matt Gooden and Ben Walker of CP+B London — not to be confused with Ben and Matt of TBWA, Matt and Ben of Hollywood, California, or Matt and Dave of M&C Saatchi — have left the agency.
Jay Gelardi, who Crispin hired from Australian shop The Monkeys to serve as digital ECD at its Colorado office last May, will replace the departing co-ECDs; he’ll be “taking over the creative leadership” of the London office effective immediately.
The two have operated as a pair for almost a quarter of a century: they worked together at Simons Palmer and Leo Burnett and served as co-creative directors at W+K London starting in 2002/2003 before leaving for a shared post at Beattie McGuiness Bungay in 2010. Both directors then resigned the BMB job in May 2011 to accept an offer from CP+B; while there, they regularly earned mentions on UK-based “top creative directors” lists while producing work for several clients, chief among them sports gambling giant Paddy Power.
CP+B lost the Paddy Power account to Matt and Ben’s former employer BMB and the Milka account to W+K Amsterdam earlier this month, but International CEO Richard Pinder doesn’t mention that development in explaining the agency’s decision.
This move amounts to Pinder hitting the “refresh” button on the London office’s creative operations. Last summer, CP+B acquired The House, a “global communications network” founded by the former Publicis COO, and named him CEO of its UK/international operations after agreeing to absorb all of his employees. At the time, Chuck Porter lamented the CP+B organization’s inability to “enable [international creative teams] to get the kind of clients they want to be working on” and implied that the new acquisition would help remedy the problem.
Here’s Pinder’s statement:
“Since CP+B acquired The House last year, we have been intent on restructuring our London office to build an innovative, media-neutral idea factory embodying our roots as digital pioneers, and our on going commitment to new media, creativity and invention. To this end, we will be realigning our resources and re-staffing certain positions, including shifting the creative leadership to reflect this digital direction.
Digital Executive Creative Director Jay Gelardi will be joining us from our Boulder office and taking over the creative leadership of the agency. We are extremely grateful to Matt Gooden and Ben Walker for their commitment to the agency over the past four years and remain great fans and friends.”
No word on where Matt and Ben are headed next, but we assume they’ll go there together: in a recent interview posted on CP+B London’s blog, Matt asked why the two had worked as a pair for so long and Ben replied:
“It’s better for the children if we stay together.”
(Pic via CampaignLive)