Today EnergyBBDO confirmed that its Chief Creative Officer Mark Taylor has stepped down from his position, effective immediately.
The official word from the agency holds that Taylor chose to resign for personal reasons; staffers learned about his departure this afternoon in an all-office meeting led by President/CEO Tonise Paul.
Taylor spent the majority of his pre-BBDO career with CP+B, serving as an art director, ACD and VP/ECD during separate stints with the Boulder shop. Between those periods working for Crispin, he also spent time as CD at Fallon and VP/ECD at GSD&M, leaving the latter as part of a 2009 “reorientation.”
Energy BBDO hired Taylor as its lead creative last February several months after he ended his third stint with CP+B (rumor at the time had him leaving Crispin to start his own agency, but that didn’t come to pass). In announcing the hire, Paul described the new Chicago chief as “an amazing talent” with a “history of marketing innovation” that includes everything from Sirius to Subservient Chicken, and Taylor later recruited former CP+B colleague Tim Roper to assist as ECD on various projects.
During his fifteen-month tenure at Energy BBDO, Taylor worked on all major accounts including Bud Light, and the agency called on him to explain the client’s Pac Man-themed Super Bowl spot to Mashable in January before the business went to Wieden+Kennedy, the new king of beers.
Taylor’s next steps remain unclear at this time. For the immediate future, Energy BBDO’s internal team of ECDs will assume his responsibilities in running the Chicago office’s creative department while the agency begins its search for his eventual successor.