"We have got a team in New York, but we will be running the engine from Leo Burnett Chicago and we will be tapping the resource of the network globally," said John O'Shea, who has relocated from Singapore to New York to lead the business.
Prior to his appointment on Samsung, O'Shea was for the past two-and-a-half years managing director at Burnett Singapore, a role which will now be filled by Phil McDonald, currently managing director of the Bangkok office.
O'Shea expects to finalise the team in the coming weeks, saying that both Burnett and Samsung had looked for people with the experience of running a global account. "We are pulling together resources very quickly. Essentially this will be a US-based account."
In previous roles, O'Shea had worked on the LG sub-regional business during his time at Ogilvy & Mather and on the Philips assignment.
O'Shea declined to reveal the assignment except to say that Burnett would work on projects with Samsung, which launched the Imagine global brand campaign during its short-lived stay with WPP.
Sources have speculated however that Burnett will be handling a Winter Olympics-related project for Samsung, for which the Korean giant is a partner sponsor at the upcoming Torino 2006 Games.
Burnett had been hotly tipped to win Samsung a year ago during the lengthy pitch against WPP.
O'Shea to lead Samsung brief
Samsung and its newly-appointed advertising agency Leo Burnett are close to finalising a team to work on the business following the Korean electronics giant's defection from WPP shops Berlin Cameron and JWT.
