Leith admits defeat in london and merges
The Leith Agency has been forced to merge its London office with rival agency, Farm Communications.
The Cello Group – owner of Leith – has acquired Farm, which holds an estimated £17million worth of accounts including Paramount, smile.co.uk, and Merlin Entertainments. It is hoped the merger will offset the loss of the Carling account worth more than £7million earlier in the year.
Heading the newly formed agency will be the combined management team of Leith’s Jeremy Pyne and Farm’s Rob Smith. Both will report to chairman John Rowley, former managing director of Leith London.
The new creative department will be overseen by creative heads from Leith; John Messum and Simon Beer, alongside former Farm creative heads, Owen Lee and Gary Robinson. A name for the new agency has yet to be announced.
Speaking of the merger, Rowley said; “All our clients have been spoken to and everyone seems very relaxed about it all. There isn’t any real conflict between the two lists so there shouldn’t be any problems and obviously one of the key reasons for keeping everybody in place is that the clients want continuity of the team so we’re aiming to do exactly that by keeping the teams in place.”
Leith opened its London office in 2000, four years before it was bought by Cello.
The agency was delivered a body blow in February this year, when its founding client – Carling – called a shock review.
In March, Coors Brewers – owners of Carling – awarded the account to Beattie McGuinness Bungay.
Meanwhile, The Leith Agency has appointed Claire Kinloch to the newly created role of head of brand experience.
Kinloch joins from Glasgow-based BD-Ntwk. She will head up Leithal Thinking alongside directors Paul Stallard and Alan Ainsley.