Hasta La Creative!

Less than a week after Canada’s Lowe Roche announced new leadership in the form of co-presidents Marie-Lise Campeau and Jeff Dack, the agency has laid off some of the key members of its team including its executive creative director and its longest-serving employee.

In case you missed it, the shift began in February as the larger Lowe and Partners organization pushed out CEO Monica Ruffo after more than five years. At the time, sources told us that the announcement surprised the team during an all-staff meeting and that many feared for their own jobs moving forward.

We can confirm that the departing employees include ECD Jane Murray, Director of Production Beth MacKinnon, and office manager Marian Shanahan.

A separate source tells us that the agency also laid off a top-ranking account executive and all of its financial staffers. The total number affected is unclear at the moment.

Here’s the official statement from the agency’s new co-presidents, Campeau and Dack:

“The nature of our business requires us to constantly adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Occasionally this includes restructuring to best serve our current clients and position ourselves for the future. It is never easy to part ways with a colleague; in fact, it’s the toughest part of this business and pains us all to see someone go.”

Some background on the departing staffers: Murray, who has spent more than twenty years in the ad industry to date, wrote copy for MacLaren McCann before serving as ACD at Ogilvy, CP+B, and Sid Lee; she then worked as a creative director in the TBWA organization before joining Lowe in 2012, and her recent work includes PSAs for clients such as Canadian Cancer Society, The Missing Children’s Network, and The Power of Movement. She also helped create the 2013 project that confirmed a few obvious things: ad folks drink nine times as much bourbon and watch nearly twice the porn as your average Canadian. (They’re also almost two times as likely to mute the ads on live TV.)

MacKinnon spent more than a decade in production at TAXI Toronto before heading to Lowe; a source calls her “a veteran of the agency” and tells us that Executive Assistant/Office Manager Shanahan was Lowe’s longest-serving employee; she spent more than two decades with the organization.

No word on their replacements.

Last night we confirmed some big changes within the Canadian wing of IPG’s Lowe family.

The biggest shift so far is the departure of Monica Ruffo, CEO of Toronto’s Lowe Roche. Here’s the statement from Michael Wall, the London-based CEO of the Lowe and Partners organization:

“After three years of service, Monica Ruffo will be leaving Lowe Roche. Monica is a great talent who helped serve the needs of our clients. We wish her all the best as she embarks on her next chapter. A succession plan will be announced soon. Until then, the experienced Lowe Roche management team is overseeing the agency.”

For context, IPG merged the Deutsch and Lowe organizations back in 2009 and facilitated an executive reshuffling more than one year later. That move saw Ruffo, formerly an executive at various Canadian agencies included Cossette and AMUSE, take over for namesake Geoffrey Roche.

At the time, Roche said he was leaving the “business of the day-to-day of creating ads.” It remains to be seen whether Ruffo will do the same — but she has clearly been pushed out of the Lowe organization.

As multiple sources tell it, the “management team” mentioned in Wall’s comment includes executives from stateside agency Lowe Campbell Ewald (which recently went through a round of layoffs after losing the Cadillac account to Publicis New York). They appear to be overseeing or “taking over” operations at the Toronto office.

According to one source, the announcement during an all-staff meeting at Lowe Roche last week surprised employees, some of whom are understandably concerned about the security of their jobs. The same source says that the meeting concluded with the confirmation that the CEO position itself will be eliminated and that “further restructuring” will happen “over the next few months.” Another contact tells us that details are currently hard to come by — even within the organization.

An agency spokesperson declined to offer additional comment at the moment but hinted that Lowe will have more staffing news to share in the very near future.

Updates as we receive them.

The fur flew, painfully, in Lowe Roche's recent street promo for Toronto's Fuzz Wax Bar. A guy almost completely covered in wax strips walked around town and invited people to tear them from his skin. Cartoon smiley or frowny faces on the strips indicated the level of pain the guy would feel. They were also emblazoned with copy such as "From bear arms to bare arms" and "We'll take the monkey of your back," along with the salon's slogan, "So good, it hurts." Yeee-ouch! Each strip could be redeemed for a 25 percent discount at Fuzz Wax. (Personally, I'd want to keep mine as a hairy, sweat-stained waxvertising souvenir.) Last year, the zany madcaps at Lowe Roche photographed a local dealership's Porsches in people's driveways to create ads targeting those very homes. That was clever, but this body-hair stunt was less creepy and provided an oddly memorable product demo. Congrats to the agency for pulling it off. More photos and credits below.

CREDITS
Project: Street Waxing
Client: Fuzz Wax Bar
Agency: Lowe Roche
Executive Creative Director: Sean Ohlenkamp
Copywriters: Jeremy Richard, Eli Joseph 
Art Directors: Ryan Speziale, Kunaal Jagtianey
Producer: Shannon Farrell
Makeup: Alyssa McCarthy
Account Director: Frederic Morin
Director: Dean Vargas
Postproduction: Motion Pantry