Y&R is now for whom Bell tolls

The wooing of Leo Burnett USA president/chief creative officer Ted Bell to become vice chairman/worldwide creative director at Young & Rubicam Advertising seems more a question of when the executive would become available than of who would fill the agency’s top creative post.
The spot had been open for more than a decade, making it perfectly conceivable that the worldwide shop, like much of its competition, could truck along just fine without having a creative torchbearer at the pinnacle of its organization.
The snaring last week of Bell, 47, who helped establish Burnett as a big shop that could also be creative, began nearly a decade ago, and the flirtations continued, on and off, for a number of years in between.