New Name, Management Team for KB+P West

NEW YORK Following Nigel Carr’s ouster from his post as managing director at KB+P West this week, the Western outpost has been renamed Kirshenbaum Bond San Francisco and will be helmed by a new team led by executive creative director and managing partner Noel Cottrell.

Cottrell will be joined by managing partners Porter Gale, a Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners alumnus, and Matt Hofherr, formerly of Omnicom’s Direct Partners in New York, where he was managing partner and chief marketing officer.

Under Carr’s leadership since its inception in 1997, KB+P West has operated semi-independently from the New York headquarters. The dissolution of the KB+P West name is an attempt to bring that shop into the network’s fold.

Carr, who was a senior executive with the agency for more than 12 years and helped found the outpost, was unexpectedly fired late Monday. He said his termination came without warning. Co-chairmen Richard Kirshenbaum and Jonathan Bond did not return phone calls, and an agency representative said there would be no comment.

Hofherr, who will lead the San Francisco office’s new business efforts, will coordinate with Kirshenbaum Bond’s director of corporate branding and new business, Michael Houston, also installed this month.

Cottrell joined KB+P’s West Coast office in December 2002 from Interpublic Group’s Foote Cone & Belding, where he held various creative director positions for FCB Africa and FCB Worldwide out of New York for more than two years. Prior to that, he founded Joe Public Advertising in South Africa in 1998, and sold it to IPG in 2001.

Gale, who was with KB+P in New York, has also freelanced at Publicis & Hal Riney and Bozell. In addition, the San Francisco office has acquired Porter Pictures, a production company founded by Porter Gale in 2001.