Proximity London has raided BBH to find a successor for Sharon Whale, who quit the agency in December to be Oliver Group’s UK chief executive.
John Watson joins as managing partner after nine years at BBH, where worked on CRM, social media and marketing for a broad range of brands, including Audi, RAC, Bang & Olufsen, Mentos, Baileys, and Unilever; he was most recently business lead on the Tesco account.
At Proximity Watson will head up the Lloyds Banking Group, Volkswagen Group and The Economist activity, a role that Whale handled as deputy chairman.
He started his agency career at employee engagement and incentives shop, BI Worldwide in 2003 after which, and joined Cogent Elliott in in 2005 to work on Land Rover’s UK and international business. He had been at BBH since 2007.
Proximity chief executive Mike Dodds (pictured with Watson) said: “John will be a fantastic addition to our senior team and I can’t wait for him to join us. The lines between different communications channels are becoming less defined all the time and it’s great to have someone on board with such in-depth experience of so many touchpoints.”
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