Hasta La Creative!

In March, Campaign Brief reported that Jeremy Craigen, ECD at DDB London who led the Volkswagen account, would be leaving the agency after 25 years.

Now we know that he went to another auto-focused agency: Innocean.

Craigen served as global ECD on VW after joining the shop as a junior copywriter way back in 1990 and worked his way up to run VW.

Both More About Advertising and several of our readers believe that Craigen did not leave voluntarily: specifically, they name DDB’s Global CCO Amir Kassaei, who succeeded Bob Scarpelli in early 2011, a the key reason for his departure.

Prior to his promotion, Kassaei was CCO and partner at DDB Germany–and responsibility for the global VW account recently moved from the UK’s adam&eveDDB to the office formerly run by Kassaei. According to MAA’s sources, Craigen was not invited to move along with the account he led due to unstated disagreements with another office’s CEO.

Now he will run creative at Innocean, which MAA calls “Hyundai’s in-house agency.” This week Craigen received high praise from the Korea Times, which wrote:

“Innocean Worldwide, an advertizing unit of Hyundai Motor Group, said Tuesday it has hired a British national with 30-years experience in advertizing as its new global chief creative officer (CCO).

Craigen said he will do everything he can to improve the quality of Innocean’s creative output and expand its business.”

For the record, Craigen himself said:

“What I love about Innocean is their honesty about themselves and their ambition for the future. It is a great company, headed by great people. And this is exactly the opportunity I have been waiting for.”

He will continue to work from his home base in the UK.