Whitson nets WPP Team News job

Former VCCP me planning partner and co-founder Chris Whitson is joining WPP’s Team News – the division set up to handle the group’s News Corp’s £28m account – as chief strategy officer.
Whitson quit the VCCP Partnership agency in October last year, having co-founded the business – as Stephens Francis Whitson – in 2005.
The agency rebranded in April 2012 after merging with data specialist Tree, in a move which saw fellow co-founder Neil Francis quit the business. Ben Stephens remains the only co-founder at the company.
In the new role, Whitson will lead the strategic output of all the agencies in Team News – OgilvyOne, Ogilvy Change, Grey London, M/SIX, The Social Partners, and The Box – across News Corp titles The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun.
Team News acts as an integrated agency with a single P&L and is part-located at News Corp’s offices in Wapping. It is headed up by former Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO marketing director Deborah Kerr.
Whitson said: “The chance to work on these fabulous brands at a time of such enormous change for the industry was too good an opportunity to ignore.
“Also, WPP’s ‘Team’ structure is, to my mind, the purest example of integration in action and being able to work with so many great agencies is something I am really looking forward to.”
His appointment reunites Whitson with two former members of the VCCP me management team – Matt Conner and Mel Stanley – who both now work at OgilvyOne.

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