Hasta La Creative!

R/GA Los Angeles appointed Nicky Bell as senior vice president, managing director. In the role, she will be tasked with expanding R/GA’s west coast office, launching unnamed “new capabilities” while working with new and existing clients and reporting to R/GA U.S. president Sean Lyons.

“Nicky is a proven leader. She’s transformed cultures, refocused and realigned agency capabilities, and contributed to significant growth of client businesses,” Lyons said in a statement. “R/GA has big plans for its Los Angeles office and Nicky is exactly the right person to deliver on them.”

Bell joins R/GA from Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, where she spent 6+ years as CEO.

Local trade press dubbed her “The Fixer” for helping to turn that office around by bringing its tech capabilities up to date. Her January resignation made headlines, leading StopPress to pen the truism “nothing is permanent in this industry.”

During her tenure, Saatchi NZ also won various new business pitches including ASB bank, Sanitarium, Coca-Cola, Air New Zealand and the New Zealand governments’ Commission for Financial Capability.

Prior to Saatchi, she spent 18 years with Ogilvy & Mather, the first seven with the agency’s Sydney office and then 11 in New York. While with Ogilvy & Mather New York she rose to the rank of senior partner, worldwide managing director, leading the agency’s global teams on its Dove, Kodak, Motorola, and Avon accounts. 

“I am thrilled to be joining R/GA,” Bell said. “With technology changing consumer behavior faster than ever, the RG/A Los Angeles team is perfectly positioned to reimagine the role of technology in the art of storytelling. They are a hugely talented, progressive thinking team. It’s good to be here.”

Well, since our inquiries last week to Havas regarding Vin Farrell went nowhere because Adweek apparently had some exclusive/vice grip on the agency’s comms, let’s just go “we hear” on this one before another “exclusive” pops up. Along with said agency’s new global chief content officer, we’ve been hearing all week that fellow R/GA-er Sean Lyons is following suit and joining up with Havas. Lyons has spent well over eight years at the agency for the digital age and for the last year has served as SVP, operations and business planning.

During his lengthy stay at R/GA, Lyons has moved up the ladder from group director to managing director to his current SVP post. We’ve checked in with both camps about the apparent move, but have yet to hear back. Maybe it was something we said, but we’ll let you know if we hear more.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.