After spending the last three years as executive creative director at M&C Saatchi London, Elspeth Lynn is parting ways with the agency (which is currently in the process of overhauling its creative department). With the departure of Lynn, who officially held the title of Group ECD, M&C Saatchi’s creative department will now jointly be overseen by Mark Goodwin, Jason Lawes, Sam Ball and Dave Bedwood.
Ball and Bedwood, along with recently appointed CEO Tom Bazeley, joined the fold at M&C Saatchi London last May when the agency acquired their longtime hometown shop, Lean Mean Fighting Machine.
Regarding M&C Saatchi’s new creative structure, Bazeley tells Campaign that “I want the person making the ultimate creative decisions to be deeply involved in the account….Having one person working at a very high level isn’t the way to achieve this.”
It seems that Bazeley plans to eliminate the ECD position altogether in order to leave creative directors with greater autonomy and a deeper sense of involvement in their respective accounts.
Prior to M&C Saatchi, Lynn spent three years in a similar ECD role at Profero. During her career, the creative vet perhaps most notably owned and co-founded zig, the agency that eventually rebranded as CP+B Toronto in 2010 (and then, of course, Union, in 2012).