Tham Khai Meng, the now-former worldwide chief creative officer who was fired from Ogilvy less than two months ago, has since lost one prestigious position while apparently retaining another.
Today a source confirmed that, contrary to his Twitter bio, Khai is no longer a member of Facebook’s Creative Council. His status as a jury president at the upcoming LIA Awards in London, however, appears to be unchanged.
You may recall that Ogilvy acted swiftly to terminate Khai this summer approximately two weeks after the Cannes festival. CEO John Seifert said in an internal memo that the decision came after an internal investigation in response to employee complaints that were filed right around the time of the festival itself.
“After carefully reviewing the investigation’s findings with several of my partners, we concluded that Khai’s behavior was a clear breach of our company values and code of conduct,” he wrote in an internal memo at the time.
One party said that the Creative Council is based on Facebook’s relationships with specific organizations rather than individuals, implying that Ogilvy would, by default, collaborate with the social network to find a replacement for Khai. Ogilvy declined to comment.
For context, Facebook launched the Creative Council in 2012 as a group of 14 agency leaders tasked with “providing the company with a forum to discuss ad product ideas and agency concerns.” The first group met at Cannes that year and included David Droga, Colleen DeCourcy, Tor Myrhen, Rob Reilly and Mark Tutssel, among others.
The group still exists, though Facebook doesn’t often publicize it. Its creator, Mark D’Arcy, was recently promoted to vp of global business marketing and CCO.
On the awards side, Khai was named as president of the LIA’s Non-Traditional jury earlier this summer, but the organization didn’t directly promote this news. His status does not appear to have changed following his departure from Ogilvy.
A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment. LIA Awards representatives have not responded to requests for comment regarding his status and their apparent decision to keep him atop the jury.
Khai is also no longer working with Twitter. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment, but parties with knowledge of its marketing department said that, like Facebook, it works with agencies directly and that Khai officially lost his status as an advisor once he was no longer employed by Ogilvy.
We also reached out to Khai on LinkedIn and will update this post if we receive a response. Anyone with additional details should use the anonymous tip box.