BBDO's Loss Is TBC's President

When Tom Hollerbach, 47, was removed unexpectedly as president last year at BBDO in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the im-mediate talk was of finding some other place for him in the Omnicom family.

But Hollerbach had another idea. “Independence is the better way to go,” he said, having moved east to Baltimore as president and partner with chairman and chief creative officer Allan Charles at TBC. “I looked at another multinational. I looked at the client side, then at something entrepreneurial, to really having equity.”

Hollerbach now has what the holding company couldn’t offer: a truly personal stake in the ad business, with clients as lofty and challenging as The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, LendingTree and Yellow Book.