Jack Morton Names Global Co-Presidents as CEO Josh McCall Transitions to Chairman

Global brand experience agency Jack Morton is making changes at the top. Longtime CEO Josh McCall will transition to chairman while Bill Davies and Craig Millon will share chief executive duties as the agency’s first global co-presidents in its 83-year history. Davies, currently chief operating officer, and Millon, chief client officer, will immediately assume their new roles. McCall, CEO and chairman, will remain chairman through the end of this year, supporting the co-presidents, then will become chairman emeritus at the start of 2023. McCall has a long history with the IPG agency, having joined Jack Morton in 1984. He was named the agency’s third CEO in 2003, following his predecessor Bill Morton and agency founder Jack Morton. As global co-presidents, Davies and Millon will share leadership responsibilities, with Davies overseeing operations and financial management and Millon running client relationships, growth and agency capabilities/offerings. Millon will retain his role as CEO at Genuine, Jack Morton’s digital marketing agency. “The occasion of passing on the responsibility to Bill and Craig is just a tremendously proud moment for me, for the agency and for the legacy and strength of the organization to be able to promote to extremely capable leaders into this position and carry on this tradition of promoting from within,” McCall told Adweek. “Bill Morton was promoted from within. I was promoted from within. And now on this occasion, we do it again.” Tasked with continuing to grow the agency domestically and internationally, Davies and Millon will support Jack Morton's 13 offices across the globe. Davies, a long-time veteran of IPG, began his career at Weber Shandwick, joining Jack Morton’s leadership in 2002. During his tenure, he has led mergers and acquisitions, strategic planning and served on GM’s Supplier Council. “Craig and I have worked really closely together for 10 years, so we get one another. We think, similarly, we know how to make decisions, and one of the commitments we just made to the agency is having two of us share this role is not going to slow anything down,” Davies told Adweek. Millon has been Jack Morton’s chief client officer since 2019 and is responsible for agency growth. He has helped to establish new offerings, including the introduction of a healthcare division. Before joining Jack Morton in 2012, Millon held roles at Revlon, Gillette and FCB/Marketing Drive. As chairman, McCall will help Davies and Millon specifically on key client relationships, new business opportunities and recruiting. A pandemic pivot Jack Morton has made a name for itself for its detailed experiential activations, from stadiums adorned with Molson Coors branding to interactive placements at the recent U.S. Open tennis tournament for Cadillac, to high-tech hybrid events like those for genomic sequencing company Illumina. During the pandemic, experiential agencies were hit hard with the loss of in-person events, but Jack Morton was able to weather the storm through Jack X, its global experience innovation practice. When Covid-19 stopped live events, the agency pivoted quickly, creating content for large virtual programs that took place during the lockdown. “We're very much a team-oriented business, and Covid only exemplified that and then brought that further to life because the geographic walls fell down … so we're even more collaborative today after Covid than we were before,” said McCall. Millon added that the agency didn’t lose any clients during that time and they are now coming back to live events with a fervor. The agency is “executing live all over the place, whether it be sponsorship, activation, b-to-b conferences, consumer engagement experiences and permanent experience branded experiences,” said McCall. Jack Morton also went into the healthcare space with a brand called Jack Health, which has grown the agency’s healthcare revenue by 55% since its launch in 2021. “We hired against it, brought in specialty players into the space, we have a pharmacist on staff … And it's been wildly successful for us,” said Millon. The agency also launched Vivi, a diversity-driven specialty practice to help brands discover how, when and where to connect with women, specifically women of color. It's led by Bonnie Smith, a boomerang employee who had gone to start her own agency but returned to head up Vivi. The future of experiential in the metaverse The rise of the metaverse has certainly created opportunities for experiential agencies like Jack Morton, and it has risen to the new challenge. Through Jack X, the agency keeps trying to figure out what's next, whether it be virtual, in-person, hybrid events, and making the best uses of technology and production. Jack Morton has been aware of the sustainable impact the agency has on the work it does, and in-person events can utilize a lot of energy. The metaverse is one way that the agency is looking to make an engaging experience that has less of an impact on the environment. Jack Morton has even created a metaverse museum to give clients a virtual tour of the digital space. They pick an avatar and then are walked through and shown the possibilities for their brands. “Jack X is acting as a consultant to help guide clients towards what might be the next step for them in the metaverse,” said Millon. MillerCoors Taps Jack Morton for Experiential, Sports, Music and Entertainment Marketing