Ogilvy & Mather appoints Gerry Human as ECD

By Matt Williams, campaignlive.co.uk, Thursday, 20 January 2011 08:00AM

O&M London has finally appointed a leader for its creative department following a three-year hiatus, by appointing Gerry Human, the worldwide executive creative director on Unilever, as its executive creative director.

Gerry Human: O&M executive creative director

Human will now be responsible for leading the agency’s entire creative department, overseeing a client list that includes Ford, BP and American Express.

O&M has been without an executive creative director since the departure of Malcolm Poynton in March 2008.

Since then the creative department has been run by the creative partners Alasdair Graham, Will Awdry and Dennis Lewis. The trio will now report into Human.

The appointment is the first major creative hire made by O&M’s chief executive Hugh Baillie, who is celebrating one year in the role this week.

Human began his career in South Africa, working for agencies including Hunt Lascaris TBWA and NetworkBBDO. In 1998 he launched his own agency, called HumanHuman, which was bought by Ogilvy South Africa five years later.

The acquisition saw Human take on the role of executive creative director at Ogilvy Johannesburg, and under his leadership the agency was the most awarded South African shop at Cannes in 2008.

In 2009 Human relocated to O&M’s London office to take up the role of worldwide executive creative director on Unilever. Last year his "Manthem" TV ad for Dove Men+Care picked up a Silver film Lion at Cannes.

Altogether Human has won 44 Cannes Lions during his career and over 50 Gold Loeries, one of South Africa’s key creative awards.

Baillie said: "Gerry was an obvious choice for the role, thanks to his experience in running a very large, successful creative department in South Africa and now two years in London leading one of Ogilvy’s biggest and most prestigious global accounts."

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk