Amateur psychologists have been reading much into the contrasting
expressions of Tim Mellors and Carol Reay in last week’s Campaign
front-page picture of Grey’s new managerial front line.
Certainly, Reay’s thin smile seemed at odds with the huge grin spread
across the face of her erstwhile partner, Mellors, standing at her
shoulder.
As one agency executive comments: ’If the photograph had speech bubbles,
Tim’s would have said, ’Wahay!’ Carol’s would have been asking, ’What am
I doing here?’’
For the Mellors Reay founders, the folding of their agency within its
Grey parent could provoke mixed emotions. While both will see the demise
of the shop bearing their names as an aborted end to an unfinished job,
Mellors may find the journey from Soho to Great Portland Street a more
comfortable trip.
Nobody doubts that Mellors, who displaces Paul Smith as Grey’s creative
chief, is the key element in the deal to give Grey a creative profile to
match its inexorable rise up the rankings from 21st spot to sixth place
in ten years.
Where this leaves Reay is an open question. ’Carol and Tim were a
professional item so it’s understandable that one of them is going to
feel like a jilted lover,’ an industry source says. ’The new set-up will
work, but it isn’t going to be an easy ride.’
Mellors’ transition will certainly be the easiest. His creative pedigree
was acquired in big agencies - Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis and GGT - and
he has been handed the opportunity to work on blue-chip businesses
again.
This, at least, will be partial compensation for an anti-climactic four
years at the first agency with his name on the door, and which he hoped
would be the vehicle for the industry-wide approbation he craved. ’Was
Tim happy with Mellors Reay?’ a former colleague asks. ’The answer is
no.’
If Grey isn’t perfect for Mellors, he seems to have decided that this is
as good as it gets career-wise. ’It isn’t the job he would have been
looking for,’ a one-time associate admits. ’But he’ll do it because the
alternative is anonymity.’
Others say Mellors’ decision was born of the frustration that no
increase in the agency’s billings was likely to change a portfolio
dominated by small clients.
In his favour is the initial rapport he seems to have established with
Grey’s Californian chief executive, Steve Blamer. ’We see eye to eye on
all fundamental issues,’ Blamer declares, allaying some internal concern
that this pivotal axis might be a problem.
’Subtle relationships with creatives can be difficult for Americans
coming from a hierarchical business society,’ an insider comments. ’And
Tim is no pussy-cat.’
What’s more, there’s a belief that Grey has more pent-up talent than the
agency gets credit for, and that it will benefit from a less
authoritarian management regime than the one imposed by Smith. ’It never
came naturally to him,’ one of his former staffers comments.
Digby Atkinson, who was with Mellors at Publicis as well as being a
one-time member of Grey’s creative department, describes it as ’a steam
vessel without enough valves on it’. Atkinson, currently the caretaker
creative director at Summerfield Wilmot Keene, says: ’Tim not only
commands immense loyalty from his own creatives but from every level of
account management. It’s something you don’t often see.’
What, though, of Reay? Leader of a shop whose growth has plateaued, she
comes in as Grey’s deputy chairman under Mellors’ shadow - and with no
experience of large agency management. ’Carol won’t be happy with what
she’s got,’ a former Mellors Reay director comments. ’But she’s a very
confident lady.’
Working in harmony with Blamer will be crucial. ’He’ll need her,’ a
former Grey senior manager predicts. ’A lot of UK clients aren’t very
comfortable with American chief executives of London agencies.’
Meanwhile, Malcolm Green, the former Mellors Reay joint creative
director, believes Reay will prove she’s not merely part of a package
deal. ’This may give her the chance to show how good she is instead of
fighting fires.’
Undoubtedly, Mellors Reay dwelled in inflammable mixture, not helped by
what some of its managers called its collective insecurity. Some believe
that the partnership of its chairman and chief executive looked good on
paper but failed to produce either an emotional bonding or tangible
agency culture. ’We were never seen as a cohesive unit,’ Justin Cernis,
the agency’s former new-business director, admits.
Never slow to hype itself, Mellors Reay enjoyed early success. It won
Burton tailoring, Mr Kipling cakes and the launch of Heart FM, while
securing a place on Procter & Gamble’s roster. But the momentum waned as
pitches for Ikea, Direct Line insurance and Maples furniture were not
converted.
Moreover, the agency behaved in a way that belied its size - boosting
overheads by hiring Green and his partner, Gary Betts, from BMP as
creative directors while Mellors was said to be drawing a pounds
200,000-plus annual salary.
For its part, Grey, which had been mulling over a Mellors Reay merger
for nine months, clearly believed that if its subsidiary was to make it
big, the breakthrough would have happened by now.
And with reports that Grey-owned MediaCom has earmarked the Media
Business as a merger partner and speculation that Grey Direct and Grey
Integrated will be brought together, the Mellors Reay marriage may only
be part of Grey’s muscle-building plan
