We have little in the way of details at the moment, but a source at Venice, California’s Zambezi tells us that Co-Founder/Executive Creative Director Brian Ford has left the agency.
Ford, whose name sat atop the credits for such recent campaigns as September’s “Cheat on Your Vodka” for VEEV, helped launch Zambezi with Chris Raih more than eight years ago after spending a decade as a Wieden+Kennedy copywriter working on Nike and other accounts.
As recently as summer 2013, Adweek named Zambezi one of the Los Angeles area’s “biggest and buzziest” shops, citing clients like PopChips, 2K Sports, Champs, and vitaminwater (you may remember the NBA2K14 campaign starring “Michael Jordan uncensored“).
The agency and its PR firm are currently “not able to comment” on the matter, which means that the rumors are true but that they cannot give us any specifics on why Ford is leaving, where he’s headed, or who may replace him.
Updates as they come in.