Mike Dodds, the highly respected former agency chief who led both Ogilvy and Proximity in pan-European and global roles, has passed away this week after suffering a heart attack last month.
Educated at Christ’s Hospital School near Horsham, Dodds went on to study History at Queen Mary University in London before joining the advertising industry in the late 1980s.
He spent his entire career agency-side, eventually joining Ogilvy in the early 1990s and rising up the ranks to become chief executive of OgilvyOne. During this time Dodds enrolled on Ogilvy’s leadership programme, Omnicom University, and was also put through Harvard’s Senior Management Programme.
By 2008, he had switched to Proximity London as CEO before being promoted to MD of Europe, global president and then global CEO.
Not that he believed he had a “big agency” mindset. Speaking to Decision Marketing in 2022, Dodds said: “From my experience there is nothing to suggest that big is automatically better. In fact, I’ve spent a lot of the past 12 years trying to get my ‘big’ agency to behave more like a small agency.”
Nevertheless, during his career he also played a key role in many of those agencies’ significant relationships with major brands including the BBC, Lloyds Banking Group, BT and VW.
However, in January 2021, Dodds left the agency industry to set up his own consultancy, InsideOut For Growth, offering growth consulting, advisory and mentoring services to businesses large and small.
He also took on a number of advisory roles, at Tug, Kinetic Foundation and The Salocin Group, which includes Edit Agency and media business Join The Dots.
The Salocin Group chief executive Nick Dixon said: “Mike was an incredible guy and a great leader who brought people along with him to achieve great things.
“I first met him some 35 years ago when he was my client at Limbo. I asked him to join the board of The Salocin Group a couple of years ago and was delighted that he accepted.
“We will all miss him and our thoughts are with his wife, Clare, and his family.”
Decision Marketing will publish further details of funeral arrangements next week as well as tributes from friends and former colleagues.
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