Adam Ferrier, the global chief strategy officer at advertising agency Cummins&Partners, has released this statement about the arrival of James Greet at the business:
We are really pleased to announce that James Greet has joined Cummins&Partners national executive team as Chief Media Officer. Greet will be based out of Cummins&Partners recently launched Sydney office but with a national remit.
Greet is widely regarded as one of the finest media minds in the country, was most recently CEO at Ikon. Greet built a reputation for leading transformation change during his time as CEO at OMD and then Mindshare (Australia, Japan and Korea). He led both agencies to Media Agency of the Year.
Prior to arriving in Australia, James had been a founding member of PHD in London and also headed Media strategy for BBH London’s global and regional clients, which is where his passion for the close connection between creative and media began. He has also worked in China for Saatchi and Saatchi.
As Greet tells it: “When I first arrived in Australia in 2002 I remember reading AdNews one day and in particular an angry reader’s letter from some creative named Sean Cummins. ‘Nothing worse than being given a space to fill by some Media buyer…..’, he opened.
“I wrote him a letter in response…words to the effect of ‘nothing worse than being given an Ad to find a home.’
“‘We should meet’, he replied.”
Thirteen years later Greet added: “It has been a long time and the Industry still continues to splinter and fragment. Yet today, more than ever, our Industry’s common purpose should simply be about applying creativity to solve client’s business issues. However it seems to me that the Media agency side of this business is further away from this purpose than ever before.
“The opportunity to continue to define and build what great media and creative thinking can achieve together here at Cummins&Partners was too good to miss. C&P has an amazing array of talented people with a diverse set of skills, all unified by a shared desire to continue to find a better way for our clients, without prejudice, and without any self interested status quo or agenda to preserve or protect.
“Thirteen years might well have been a long time to finally meet, but they do say good things come to those that wait,” he revealed.
Cummins&Partners CEO, Chris Jeffares was thrilled with the new hire. “We launched the agency just over 4 years ago with a unified creative:media agency model, and we’ve had a great ride over that time. Now with 5 offices between here and North America, we decided it was time to look to the next 5 years and what we believe the future holds for agencies, brands and our clients.
“Anyone can see that there is a massive acceleration of the disruption in the media and marketing investment areas globally, and with James we have a proven world-class thinker and leader,” he added.
The addition of Greet rounds out a string of major hires for Cummins&Partners and finalises a senior strategic team including Adam Ferrier as Global Chief Strategy Officer and Kirsty Muddle as Chief Innovation Officer.
The new role comes after the announcement of Rebecca Bezzina joining as Managing Director of Cummins&Partners Sydney earlier this week.
Photo: [L to R] Chris Jeffares, Kirsty Muddle, James Greet
Source: Cummins&Partners