John Kottmann, evp, chief strategy officer and co-director of planning at McCann Erickson, is moving to Ogilvy & Mather in New York as senior partner, managing director in the WPP agency’s planning department.
At McCann in New York, Kottmann was global planning director on MasterCard and helped expand the credit card’s "Priceless" campaign to more than 100 markets. He pitched and won the agency’s $1.3 billion U.S. Army account in 2005, developed the "Army Strong" positioning, and led strategy in the pitch earlier this year in which McCann retained the business. Kottmann was also part of the team that won the Staples account and developed the brand’s "Easy Button" strategy.
Kottemann joined McCann in 1992 and during his career there played a role in new business, helping to pitch account wins like Applebee’s, Smith Barney, MLB Network, Nasdaq, Burger King, Bacardi, Lowe’s, Intel, Nikon and HP. Part of his new mandate at Ogilvy is to drive planning’s role in business development.
The planning exec’s departure is the latest in top executive changes at McCann since new McCann Worldgroup CEO Nick Brien assumed the top job in April, 2010 and follows the exit of North American CMO Mitch Caplan in April, after just seven months on the job.
