Billy Mawhinney to leave BJL
After much speculation, The Drum has learned that Billy Mawhinney, creative director of BJL, is to leave the advertising agency after two years.
Mawhinney joined BJL in March 2008 having quit as creative director of Leo Burnett the previous month.
He began his career with JWT and held positions with Bartle Bogle Hegarty, CDP, Still Price Lintas, Ogilvy & Mather and Faulds. He took the creative director role at Leo Burnett in 2005.
Five months after joining BJL Mawhinney was reunited with Faulds creative partners Pete Bastiman and Tom Richards, making them deputy creative directors at the agency. When he promoted the pair to co-creative directors in April last year it sparked rumours that he was planning to leave.
Over the last few months Mawhinney has reduced his days at the agency, and he will leave this week. He told The Drum that he hoped to work with the agency again on ‘future projects’ and that he planned to continue visiting Manchester from London.
He said: “I've been there for two years, and hopefully have made a significant contribution both in the broader agency context and within the creative department. During my time with the agency I've tried to help raise our creative profile and very importantly put in place a succession plan, although the best I could do was Pete and Tom. Ho Ho!"
Nicky Unsworth, managing director of BJL, said she was pleased to have kept Mawhinney working at the agency for "so long" and expected him to remain "a great friend of BJL" in the future.
“Billy has been with us for two years and in that time he has achieved what he set out to do, which was to build our creative reputation and put in a plan for succession. In that time we’ve seen our creative reputation grow and won many awards at the time and he has brought in a strong creative director partnership.
“We’ve all loved working with Billy and he leaves while Pete and Tom are doing a great job of heading up what is now an incredibly strong creative department," Unsworth added.