Staff Ch-Ch-Changes At Blast Radius

By SuperSpy 

Canadian digital agency, Blast Radius, was founded in 1997 and managed to survive the downturn of 2000 with flying colors. The agency had a strong reputation for understanding brands, the digital landscape and being in possession of a very sharp management team. It also spread out to include shops in New York, San Francisco, Amsterdam and London.

In 2007, the agency was bought by WPP. Since then, all of the offices have churned through bodies and we’ve been remiss in keeping up. A Blast Radius spokesperson told us that the shop is moving to a West/East coast strategy rather than having one high level position overseeing the entire network. Here’s the top level run down below. In some cases, the agency has asked us not to list names as some of the positions have yet to be confirmed.

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– EVP of Marketing Services and GM of the New York office, Tom Quinn, was let go in May last year, but stayed on through November. He was replaced with a client partner from one of the other Blast locations who holds the title of senior account manager, not GM.

– EVP of Client Services, Steve Harmer, quit in December after 8 years and with a nice chunk of buy-out change in his pocket. No replacement for his role as GM of Toronto, as of yet. Blast says they are down to finalist candidates though.

– VP of Strategy, Leigh Himel, stayed at Blast for about six months in the Toronto office, before heading to Toronto’s Twist Image. It’s unclear why she stayed such a short amount of time. She was replaced by two separate bodies with one person holding down the West and the other East side of the company’s business.

– VP of Technology, Darrell Snow, left in December for Infosys. This role was also replaced with an West/East split.

– West Coast ECD, Oonie Chase, quit after five months in Vancouver. She was replaced with Chip Reingold in December 2008 &#151 Blast’s new chief creative officer out of the west. The east coast leader is Peter Munck.

– And finally, Lorenz Esguerra left Blast to return to his home state of Minneapolis. The agency is interviewing for his position right now.

So, whew…

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