Currie, client services director at TBWA\RAAD, will run Aegis Korea and Japan as CEO, starting in August. He replaces acting CEO Roger Winter, who returns to his role as a consultant to the company. The Canadian will report to Patrick Stahle, CEO of Aegis Asia-Pacific, and his appointment ends a five-month search for a North Asia head.
“I need people with a combination of communications skills, entrepreneurship and business sense to fulfil my ambition of creating a communications planning-led network. Blair fits the bill,” said Stahle.
Over a 25-year career in advertising in both account managing and strategic planning roles, Currie has worked in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam as well as his native Toronto. Before TBWA\RAAD, he had stints at TBWA\Japan, DDB Japan, Great Wave in Singapore — an agency he founded — Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore and McCann Erickson Thailand among others.
Currie is the latest in a swathe of appointments made by Stahle, now a year into the job as Asia-Pacific head. Aegis’s Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia offices now all have new management (Media, 16 May). Also settling into a new role is Mainardo de Nardis, global CEO of Aegis Media, who took over the network in September last year. “We are 1,500 people in Asia, which is by no means small. I want the Asia operation to become a third of the business. We are not there yet, but have come a long way since we launched in Hong Kong in 1997.”
De Nardis was clear on where Aegis’s priorities lie. “When global clients ask me where they should spend their next dollar my advice is always India and China.”
But there are obstacles, he added: “We expect to double in size within two years, but what worries me is how to manage that growth.
“Talent, of course, is a big issue — especially in China, where an advertising and media culture hasn’t existed until recently. There, we can’t simply acquire good people. We have to create them. Globally, I want Aegis to develop into a perfectly integrated communications agency – and Asia is the place we’ll get there first.”
