Ex Happy Soldiers’ planning director Mark Sareff lured to Ogilvy as national head of Strategy
Ogilvy & Mather has continued its focus on senior management hires, today announcing the appointment of Mark Sareff to a newly-created role of national head of strategy, effective September.
Following the appointment of new ECD Brett Howlett for Ogilvy Sydney last week, Sareff will work across the Sydney and Melbourne offices and be based in Sydney, overseeing strategic output and Ogilvy Australia’s 20-strong strategy and planning team.
Most recently part of the Happy Soldiers team that won praise locally and overseas for its Virgin Money and highly-awarded Tontine campaigns, Sareff has also worked as National Planning Director at The Campaign Palace, and as a director at Prophecy Consulting. He is viewed as one of Australia’s most respected brand and communication strategists.
Says Ogilvy Australia’s Executive Chairman, Tom Moult: “I’m delighted to add Mark to the band”. “We’ve chased him down because he is the best guy in the business. I have challenged Mark to increase the ‘thinking culture’ across our whole business. I haven’t found any disagreement with clients when I tell them that I believe the agency of the future will be trading arms and legs for brains.”
Ogilvy Australia’s CEO Andrew Baxter said Sareff would also focus on leading an already strong team of thinkers across Ogilvy’s offices, with skills spanning digital, data, and more traditional areas within strategy and planning.
“Ogilvy’s strategic offering has grown significantly in the past four years, and we now have an incredibly strong team of thinkers that work right across a range of diverse fields,” Baxter explained. “It’s great to have someone of Mark’s calibre head up this impressive team, and join the Ogilvy business.”
Sareff has won a raft of effectiveness awards during his career including the Grand Prix, Gold, Silver and Bronze in the AFA Effectiveness tournament and Silver in the APG Creative Planning awards.
Sareff said of joining Ogilvy: “The first advertising book I ever read was David Ogilvy’s “Confessions of an Advertising man” and I’ve used his famous Russian doll metaphor as a guide to hiring. Now, after admiring Ogilvy from a distance, I get to walk in the great man’s footsteps.
“The late David Ogilvy was a strategist’s dream as far a Creative Directors go – he championed curiosity and effectiveness relentlessly. I’m so looking forward to continuing this tradition on behalf of Ogilvy Australia’s clients.”
Sareff has been a marketing client, a University lecturer and for most of his working life a brand and advertising strategist in South Africa, the UK and Australia. He has worked across almost every category including packaged goods, services, technology and durables for both local and international companies.
36 Comments
Well done Mark – you and Tom are going to have a lot of fun.
Why is it every time a CEO talks up a new hire, it comes across as trashing the people already there?
one of the best.
and with one fell swoop, a whole bunch of planners suddenly want to work at Ogilvy.
Mark is one of the best.Well done O&M
Hilarious. In what parallel universe is Mark the ‘best in the business’ and Happy Soldiers a success. Nice guy and competent though he maybe we make ourselves look silly with such statements.
How can he be “lured” anywhere – wasn’t he unemployed after the failure of Happy Soldiers?
Well done and good luck Mark.
Great news Mark…a really good guy and great thinker.
With one fell swoop, Woolworths have lost all their strategic thinking!
If Ogilvy’s CEO is Andrew Baxter, where and what is O’Brien doing?
Happy Soldiers a success?
It went out of business in under 2 years.
There appear to be some right bitchy third-rate planners commenting on this thread. Congrats Mark (ignore the haters)
I don’t know Mark. And he may be a great planner and friend.
But Tom isn’t doing him any favors by blowing Mark’s trumpet. And missing all the right notes.
Quit selling, ’cause not everyone’s buying.
Let’s Mark’s work speak for itself.
How many effectiveness awards have those ‘incredibly strong team of thinkers’ won for Ogilvy and their clients over the last four years?
How many more delusional press releases do we have to endure from these guys at The Moult Agency?
3.56 – You’ve clearly never been in a position of management. Its called PR. Look it up. You might learn something.
I love the PR word “lured” lets face it in this job market we will all take anything we can get. Be real people who are you kidding?
1.50 – You are wrong about 2 years.
I worked with Happy Soldiers over 4 years ago through Host.
It was run by John Kane as a creative shop at that time.
He started it way back then.
It won lots of awards and became Hotshop of the Year.
Mark came along later with Lindsey when it became an agency.
That was less than two years ago.
This spin of saying it was less than 2 years old does a disservice
to all the people who made it famous beforehand.
Fer fuck’s sake, I only said well done!
You want to change Ogilvy’s or have a go at Tom, get off your fat arse, get a job there if you can and be the change you want to see in the world.
In the meantime, a well respected planner – NOT a researcher, NOT a frustrated creative (which puts him in the top 2% of that job description) got a job and his new employers were chuffed enough about it to tell the industry.
That’s it.
4.20-
Actually i once ran the biggest agency in town.
And I never resorted to PR to pre-sell new hires.
That’s why we stayed as No 1.
You’ll be amazed how fast clients can discern shit from shinola.
And how few clients actually believe the drivel pumped out of CB forums.
Some people are bloody good at pr’ing their ability to drive agencies backwards, he will win the first ever inverse Australian Effie of 2012 for agency going backwards
4.15- let me guess you left 4 years ago and continue to throw stones. Mark is a great hire- well done Tom
4:56 – the problem is when LIndsay and Mark joined Happy Soldiers it was heralded and promoted by them as the fresh start of the agency. A new beginning of a wonderful new era for the agency. Less than two years later it closes. Its not unfair to point out that that would be commonly regarded as a failure by anyone but the most deluded of friends.
Annoying as it is spin will always be a central part of this industry. You can hardly expect them to issue a Press Release with the headline “second rate agency hires out of work planner” . I suspect Mark himself is embarrassed by all the overclaim.
“Uncreative multinational sweatshop hires ex planning director of failed start up” – hold the front page! Sometimes this industry is beyond parody.
Congrats, Mark!
Even bigger congrats to Ogilvy, you’ve done very well there.
Is this the same man that swore blind he’d never work for a big agency again as he hated them all. Has Ogilvy really shrunk that much?
How can you be part of a f**ked up creative agency like Happy Soldiers and still end up with a job like this? This industry is in a bad place.
It’s tragic (or comic, depending on your POV) when a strategically directed ‘spin’ spins so out of its orbit and comes back to bite the spinner in the process.
Thus far, nobody looks good at all.
Bet all involved wish they could unpop the bottle.
And that’s why I am glad i am no longer in this cess pool of a business.
The mega bonuses which I now get is just icing on the cream on top of a thick cake-Yumm!
Thanks to forums like this, I am reminded just how glad I am where I am.
Hey mega bonus guy, we’re glad you left too, you sound like a huge cunt.
Ok…this is now getting way out of control. Now any news good or bad just turns into one big, messy, cluster fuck….congrats Mark on the new role.Some people must have very little energy left after all the hating they put into comments on this site.
9.54
Yes!
Yes I can be one.
Especially when I put agencies on review or when I tell agency bosses that kissing my arse gets them nowhere. Yes- life is sweet on the other side.
If more ad guys had brains, balls & backbones, nobody will need to vent on this forum.
Stick to thinking about solving the client’s business problems, less about spin doctoring hires, departures, new wins, losses, transformational ‘silver bullets, next big things, creative stars and planning stars while ignoring the good folks already there who actually built the business and you will see how quickly some clients start treating you guys as true partners.
Why would we give up a valued partner to our competitor?
The gold clients value are not the plated door stops in the lobby but the experience in the veterans. There is gold in old but they are just on spin-worthy.
The truth hurts doesn’t it?
11:19, I think what 4:15 was trying to say is that Mark Sareff, Chris Ford and Chris James are all people recognised for their creative and business contributions to their clients and agencies.
What Mr Baxter was saying is that Ogilvy has been strong in planning for years and it just got stronger with the hire of Mark. The latter is true. The former is not.
Ogilvy has never been recognised for anything except being partners with John Singleton.
Get rid of the Singleton people and you might have the start of an agency. Until that time, keep sending out press releases that keep masking how truly bad both your strategic and creative work is.
Apparrently ,according to the latest press release, as well as instantly turning Ogilvy into a great agency he is also going to solve the US debt crisis and the environment.
Hey mega bonus guy we’re glad you left too, someone has to keep the stables clean. I bet your mega bonuses steam on these cold mornings. We would love to re cork the bottle, but with you in it you repulsive fart.
Ogilvy are great at hiring good people. They really are. They always hire good creatives, good planners, good CDs (the suits are really average but you get the gist). They hype them up… and then, nothing. The results never come through, it’s like these staff disappear into some kind of Ogilvy shaped black hole. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still good, these individuals don’t magically lose their talent the minute they walk into Ogilvy House, yet one or 2 years later there’s always an unfortunate parting of ways. So what’s the one thing in common that these situations all have? It starts with M and ends with anagement. Until you change that, the problem will never end. You just have a lot of bitter, pissed off and burnt out ad people. And then the new hires and bullshit press releases begin again.
9.01 it’s true, clients do value the work of the older, more experienced creatives who aren’t seen as new and shiny enough for the trade press. They value it greatly.
Trust me, I know. As far as I can see, the main reasons Ogilvy still has any clients left is the Singletons people.