Grey Melbourne poaches Ogilvy’s Michael Knox to fill executive creative director role

Grey Melbourne has snared Ogilvy Melbourne ECD Michael Knox as its new CD, filling the vacuum left by the departure of Ant Shannon in April.

Knox has been in the Australian advertising industry for more than 15years both in Sydney and Melbourne. He has worked with Clemenger BBDO,and at Ogilvy Sydney on some of Australia’s most famous brandsincluding AAMI, Australia Post, BMW, Mini, Myer, Yellow Pages, Telstra,and Crown Lager and has won various national and international awardsincluding Cannes Lions, New York Festivals and AWARD.

Knox was promoted to ECD at Ogilvy Melbourne in May last year after six years at the agency.

Knox joins Grey from fellow WPP agency Ogilvy Melbourne where over the last 6 years he has led their creative department from a mid size, largely retail creative team to be Melbourne’s biggest creative department. He brings a wealth of experience across packaged goods, retail, brand and government enterprise, as well as world class credentials in integrated and new media initiatives.

Says Knox: “You’d be a fool not to have a tremendous amount of respect for the work Grey has produced over many years. To be working with Nigel, Pete and in fact the whole crew at Grey is an exciting prospect.  And to be back working with Luke, who places huge value on ideas and chasing opportunities is terrific.”

This is part of the ongoing resurgence at Grey Melbourne that started a year ago when executive chairman and CEO, Paul Gardner, placed Luke Waldren in charge of their Melbourne office.

Waldren, who worked with Knox when he was managing director of BADJAR Ogilvy, joined Grey in April 2010.  Prior to that he launched a start-up with his brother focussing on Branded Entertainment.

Says Gardner: “We’ve had a terrific team in place at Grey for many years and it was simply time to evolve and to add to our offer to meet new demands and challenges.  Part of that is building a new digital offer, which we can now proudly say is well established and winning new assignments.”

Adds Waldren: “Over the last 12 months we have built a digital team that has significant competitive differences. To my knowledge, when it comes to digital, there aren’t many (or any) creative agencies that have gone to the level of housing media based digital channel planners and strategists. Creative agencies tend to focus just on the shiny parts of digital, whereas we believe there’s a huge gap in the paid space too and clients are demanding it from creative agencies more every day. It’s just an example of how we try and ensure we remain both relevant and at the same time deliver a tangible difference. All agency leaders must ask themselves, ‘how are we different?’.  It’s a question we ask ourselves every day.

Since Waldren started, Grey Melbourne has added to the hugely credentialed Grey team, with new planners and creatives that focus on doing things differently. And now with the arrival of Knox, it’s another key step forward for the agency.

In the last 6 months Grey Melbourne has picked up new business with Lean Cuisine, Melbourne Storm and the National Heart Foundation