Hasta La Creative!

Saatchi & Saatchi New York CEO Brent Smart and CCO Jay Benjamin are leaving the agency, to be replaced by Andrea Diquez and Javier Campopiano at the beginning of September.

Smart was appointed CEO in November of 2013, replacing Durk Barnhill, who spent a little over a year in the position. Before being named CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi New York, Smart spent two years serving as worldwide managing director, leading the General Mills account globally. Prior to joining Saatchi & Saatchi, Smart spent two years as managing director with BBDO San Francisco, following over four and a half years in the same position with Colenso BBDO in Auckland, New Zealand.

“Jay and I started this journey of reinventing Saatchi New York together as partners, and we’ve decided to finish as partners, as we both leave the agency to pursue other opportunities,” Smart said in a statement. “For me personally, after five years with the agency it’s time for a change, and the time is right to do that now with the right succession in place, which is something we’ve been talking about for a while.”

Benjamin joined Saatchi & Saatchi New York as CCO from Leo Burnett in April of 2014. He spent four years as CCO for Leo Burnett New York, following two years as executive vice president, executive creative director with Leo Burnett Sydney and a year as executive creative director with JWT before that.“I’m incredibly proud of the team at Saatchi & Saatchi New York, and especially of being named Creativity’s Comeback Agency of the Year,” Benjamin said. “It’s been a true labor of love and an honor to work with such an amazing roster of brands. I’m very excited for what’s next for myself and for the agency. The view was pretty good too.”

Diquez has served as president, global director of Saatchi & Saatchi since last October, tasked with leading day-to-day operations, client relations and running P&G’s global Olay account, a task she previously handled as executive vice president, global director for three years, also leading P&G operations in the Americas. Prior to that she spent nearly two and half years as CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Mexico. She originally joined Saatchi & Saatchi as vice president, management supervisor of Saatchi & Saatchi New York in 1997, rising to the rank of senior vice president, global equity director at the New York office before leaving to lead Saatchi & Saatchi Mexico.

Campopiano has served as senior vice president, chief creative officer for Conill Saatchi & Saatchi U.S. and Latin America, working with clients including P&G, Toyota, Mondelez and T-Mobile. Prior to that he served four four and a half years as CCO and regional executive creative director for FCB International and FCB New York, leading working for clients such as SC  Johnson, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Nissan, Jack Daniels, FDA and Amtrak. Prior to that he spent nearly three years as a  creative director for Saatchi & Saatchi Buenos Aires, working with clients including P&G, Ambev and Cadbury.

“We greatly appreciate the vision and passion that Brent and Jay have brought to the agency during their time here and we thank them for their contribution,” said Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide CEO Robert Senior. “We’re looking forward to the next chapter of Saatchi NY under Andrea and Javier’s leadership as we continue to focus on the success of our clients.”

The leadership changes follow the announcement earlier this month that Saatchi & Saatchi executive chairman and Publicis Groupe head coach Kevin Roberts will resign his position at the start of September, in the wake of theBusiness Insider interview in which he made controversial comments about gender diversity issues and Cindy Gallop.

These moves follow General Mills’ July announcement that it would hold a closed review of its creative and content agencies. Since then, multiple sources have told us that Fallon is representing Publicis in that review two years after GM hired the agency’s former strategy lead Michael Fanuele as its in-house chief creative officer.

Saatchi & Saatchi finally has a new chief marketing officer.

The agency announced the appointment of Christine Prins to the position of chief marketing officer today, Adweek reports. Prins fills the role, which has been vacant since Ben Bittman left the agency in 2010. She arrives from KBS+, where she has worked in business development since 2008, most recently serving as chief growth officer. Prior to KBS+ she spent almost two years working in business development at Publicis.

Prins joins a management team including fresh arrivals CCO Jay Benjamin (who arrived in April) and CSO Wanda Pogue (July). Some of Saatchi & Saatchi’s biggest accounts include General Mills, Procter & Gamble and Walmart, and the agency recently added Heineken’s Tecate beer and Vita Coco to its roster.

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Today we learned that some staffing changes have indeed occurred at Saatchi & Saatchi New York this week.

To continue in the passive voice: it is true that a small number of employees, most of whom worked in the creative department, are no longer with the agency as of yesterday. Tipsters hinted that the changes centered on the shop’s Wellness department, but we can’t confirm that.

We do, however, suspect that this shuffling of the desks may have something to do with the recent appointment of Jay Benjamin, who left his position as CCO at Leo Burnett New York to join the Publicis sister agency in May. That move came less than a year after Brent Smart took the reins as CEO in November 2013.

The new team’s ultimate strategy remains unclear, but on the wellness front it will almost certainly not involve cats, be they grumpy or not.

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