Birkin resigns, Omnicom restructures

Love will work with Serge Dumont, senior vice-president, who has been promoted to president of Omnicom APIMA and chairman for Asia-Pacific.

Prior to becoming vice-chairman of Omnicom, Love was president, global clients at Omnicom’s TBWA Worldwide. He was responsible for the agency’s largest global client, Nissan, based in Tokyo. He is also understood to have strong association with Procter & Gamble. It has yet to be decided where Love will be based.

The change in leadership is effective 1 July and comes after months of speculation on Birkin’s future. 

“I resigned several weeks ago,” Birkin told Media. “I have known of my plans and [John] Wren has known for some weeks. This is the end of a project for me personally…I need to move forward. It is not necessarily about large organisations and titles.”

Birkin, who took on the job of Omnicom president and CEO for Asia-Pacific in 2005, was widely tipped to take on a bigger role in New York following his stint in Asia.

At the time of his appointment, Omnicom’s Asia challenges and leadership issues were glaringly apparent, with the holding company seen as being more focused on other parts of the world. 

Critically, its scale and credibility in Asia could not match that of WPP and the region appeared to be a poor relation to other parts of the word. 

One of Birkin’s priorities was to raise the profile of Omnicom. “When I came to the region, there was very much a specific task of what I had to do. We needed to put more emphasis on the region; not all of our brands were performing well at the level we needed them to. A holding company presence with someone of my particular style was useful in turbo-charging this,” he said.

“All of our brands now are performing better and extremely competitive. They have been awarded [Media magazine’s] Agency of the Year in creative [BBDO], media [OMD] and PR [Fleishman Hillard]. We have excellent people on the ground who have achieved this.”

Birkin, who has acquired a majority stake in a promotions and hospitality company, RPMC, will move to New York next month. The venture will be his third start-up, with Birkin describing it as “small but global”.

RPMC delivers brand experiences in sport, music and entertainment through events and promotions. It has activated programmes linked to major properties such as The Summer and Winter Olympic Games; The FIFA World Cup; Formula One and the Grammy Awards.

As well as New York, it has offices in Los Angeles and London, working with the likes of Abbott Labs; adidas; Anheuser-Busch; British Telecom; CBS; Hard Rock; Mattel; McDonald’s and Sony.