Hasta La Creative!

Last week, Rosetta (which is now part of the Razorfish Global Network) announced the appointment of a new president.

Another major change that accompanied the promotion of Partner/Rosetta West Lead Tammy Soares was the departure of Rosetta CEO Eric Healy. Multiple sources close to the matter confirm that Healy, who joined Rosetta last February before Publicis folded the agency into the larger Razorfish organization, is no longer its chief executive. (He replaced Tom Adamski, currently CEO of Razorfish, in November.)

Prior to joining the Rosetta organization, Healy served as VP/general manager and head of new business at SapientNitro’s Boston headquarters. Previous agency positions include EVP at Aegis/Isobar, SVP/director of interactive at Mullen, VP of strategy at Digitas, and group director at Arnold Worldwide. He also worked client-side in roles at Reebok and the Rockport shoe company.

Rosetta has gone through several changes since the Publicis move last year. After assuming the CEO role, Healy himself wrote an internal memo tracking moves like the departure of CCO Lars Bastholm (now with Google’s The Zoo) and managing partner Jeff Thaler (now managing director at Huge). A further round of cuts in April allegedly included ECD Frank Iqbal.

North American CCO Alex Mahernia, named by some as Bastholm’s successor, also left the agency in May for a job as SVP of creative at business management software company Mindbody. The agency appears to be without both a chief executive and a chief creative officer at the moment.

Rosetta/Razorfish has no comment on Healy or the status of the Rosetta CEO position, so we cannot speculate on whether the agency will seek a replacement or eliminate the role altogether.

At the time of Soares’ promotion, Rosetta said that it “continues to beef up its executive team,” so we expect more announcements to come.

In case you missed it, Publicis Groupe folded Rosetta into the Razorfish Global Network last November in a move that saw quite a few executive changes within the agency: its chief creative officer, managing partner, tech lead, and others departed as Tom Adamski became Razorfish Global CEO and Eric Healy was promoted from managing partner to CEO at Rosetta.

CCO Lars Bastholm was among those who left; he’s now joined several other veterans of the agency world like Scott Lange of Team Detroit and Rudi Anggono of TBWA in accepting a creative role within Google’s “agency for agencies,” The Zoo.

We hear that Rosetta went through another, smaller round of staffing changes this week.

Since Razorfish/Rosetta has no interest in communicating via anything but boilerplate statements, this is the best we can do in terms of an official response:

“A small number of staff adjustments have been made in 2015 consistent with regular business cycles.”

Here’s how we hear it from several sources:

• The agency let “several” employees go this week after reviewing its Q1 performance in light of the revised goals mentioned in the November memo
• ECD Frank Iqbal, who joined the agency in 2008 and was promoted to partner in 2011, was among those let go (along with at least one account director)
• One source claims that the cuts affected approximately two percent of total North American staff within Rosetta (but not the larger Razorfish organization)

One thing is clear: the North American org is hiring for “close to 40? open positions at the moment.

Update your portfolio.

In case you haven’t seen it already this morning, The Publicis Groupe officially rewarded Maurice Levy for his failure today by extending the current chief executive’s role until (approximately) The Avengers 3.

Despite the fact that Levy assured The Guardian that he would “not be seeking a new term” in the halcyon days of 2010 and that other reports had him set to leave next year, it seems that Levy will stick around at least until the approval of all accounts at the end of 2016 — and that he will leave in early 2017.

Obviously, “No clear successor has been appointed to replace Levy.”

Two former candidates will definitely not be replacing him, though.

(more…)

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We’ve seen your tips and confirmed that New York’s Rosetta, or “Publicis Groupe’s customer engagement agency”, did indeed lay off a number of staffers across its North American practice yesterday.

Here’s the agency’s statement:

“As part of the growth and evolution of our business, we are sometimes forced to make adjustments to our staffing structure to align with current market needs. Some recent adjustments were made that impacted less than 5% of our North American staff. In order to meet increased market demand for our services, we are also adding new talent and capabilities to our staff.”

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