Carl Hopkins joins Propaganda as executive chairman
Former JDA chairman and business consultant Carl Hopkins has returned to the marketing agency scene after a four year hiatus, joining Propaganda as its executive chairman.
Hopkins, who sold his shares in JDA in 2007 and has been working as a business consultant to a range of companies, told The Drum that he had joined the Leeds based creative business to work alongside founder and executive chairman Julian Kynaston who is contining to oversee the growth of his make-up brand Illamasqua.
Following the sale of his shares in JDA, Hopkins entered a four year non-compete agreement which ended last summer, prohibiting him from working with another marketing services firm during that time.
Hopkins, who will continue his charity work and consultancy work with some other companies, explained that he will now devote around half of his working time to the agency in the role.
“I’ll be working with the agency in order to help it grow and work with the top team and challenge and guide some of their ideas as they go forward. I will also help them to articulate their digital proposition. They are heavily into digital, more so than most people would realise. The work that they do is fantastic, they just need to tell more people about it.”
“This is a very good business that is in a very strong position and it is still planning for growth, even though it is in a strong state anyway. I met with Julian and their top team several times before Christmas and I was nothing if not impressed.”
Hopkins continued to praise the ‘Propaganda Model’ which he described as both ‘unique’ and a ‘compelling proposition’.
“I don’t think that outside world will be aware of the work that these guys do,” he continued. “They have a different model to a traditional agency…the driver for Propaganda is to understand the potential within a business and help them build their brand and build a market.
“What I haven’t come across elsewhere that I have found here is that you have a very senior team who are shareholding directors who have a director client relationship. Their whole focus is on that client. They’re not one part of that client, not just the planning aspect, or the creative aspect, or the media aspect as you mind find in other instances. They literally sit on the side of business owners and work on their business and therefor present solutions that will move that business forward.”
He added that the agency will look to take its strength of building brands and moving into the digital arena.