Grey London hired Caroline Pay as joint-chief creative officer, effective next month.
Pay joins Vicki Maguire, who is being promoted to joint-CCO from her previous role as executive creative director, in the role. Both Pay and Maguire will also be members of the agency’s executive management team.
Their appointments follow the resignation of CCO Nils Leonard, along with CEO Lucy Jameson and managing director Natalie Graeme, last June. Leonard subsequently went on to co-found coffee company Halo.
Pay left BBH London, where she served as executive creative director, managing partner last July.
“My next move was all about the team for me – finding the right team with the right ambition. Having known Vicki for over a decade, we’ve always known we would rule one day – it was only a matter of time. What can I say? She’s my hero. Vicki and I share enormous self-belief, monster ambition, potty mouths and the ability to lead generously,” Pay said in a statement.
“We pride ourselves in making our teams and our clients feel anything is possible, and now it really is. This is the best chance in town. Bring it on,” she added.
Pay originally joined BBH London as a managing partner at the beginning of 2014 and received a promotion to deputy executive creative director that November. While with BBH, she worked with brands including BBC, Tesco and Refuge. Prior to joining the agency she spent three and a half years as a creative director with Mother London, working with brands such as Post Office, New Look, GREAT Britain and Boots.
Maguire joined Grey London in 2009 and subsequently received a promotion to deputy executive creative director in 2013 and executive creative director two years later. Her best known work with the agency has been for the British Heart Foundation. Before joining Grey she spent time at agencies including Ogilvy & Mather Amsterdam and W+K London, where she first worked with Pay.
“I’m super excited. We met at W+K and have talked about doing something together ever since,” Maguire said in a statement. “Caroline is a rare talent in that she understands how to not just create talked-about work, but she gets how to play brands in culture, as well as recognising how important culture is to an agency. I can’t bloody wait.”
“We love Caroline’s breath-taking ambition – both for the work itself and also for the people she works with. Her ability to walk into any room and galvanize the people in it is palpable,” added Grey London CEO Leo Rayman, who took over in that role following Jameson’s resignation.
“Vicki has been Grey’s backbone, ringleader and conscience over the past eight years, and in promoting her to CCO, we’re recognizing her unswerving support for our people and our culture and her fierce brilliance in developing and nurturing the world-beating ideas we’re known for.”