Saatchi & Saatchi Australia snares Mandie van der Merwe and Avish Gordhan from Dentsu Creative for joint Chief Creative Officer roles
Saatchi & Saatchi Australia has lured Mandie van der Merwe and Avish Gordhan, the multi-award winning creative duo, from Dentsu Creative, as the agency’s new joint Chief Creative Officers. The pair depart from the joint CCO roles at Dentsu Creative after a one year stint
Gordhan and van der Merwe (above right), who have been creative partners for 20 years, have honed their craft across three continents, with their work recognised over 300 times at the biggest award shows in the industry, including D&AD, Cannes Lions, The One Show, Clio and Spikes.
Says Dave Bowman (above left), Chief Creative Officer of Publicis Groupe ANZ: “I am beyond excited to be able to bring Mandie and Avish onboard to lead Saatchi & Saatchi’s creative offering. With their unique people skills, strategic prowess, and creative firepower, I can’t wait to see what these two amazingly talented new-world creatives make possible at the intersection of storytelling, data, technology and media.”
Says Patrick Rowe (above, second from left), CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia: “Dave and I wanted to double down on creativity at Saatchi & Saatchi, so approaching Mandie and Avish just made sense. Why get one Chief Creative Officer when you can get two with an awards list as long as your arm? More importantly, they understand the role creative thinking plays in a new integrated world and will be a driving force for change. We couldn’t be more excited that they’re joining our team.”
Gordhan and van der Merwe have made a name for themselves, establishing environments where creativity doesn’t merely tap into culture but sparks it.
Speaking on her new role, van der Merwe said: “When Saatchi & Saatchi come knocking, you answer. And when the person knocking is Dave Bowman, you take out the fancy biscuits. Between Pat and the team, there is an infectious passion for creativity that is hard to ignore.”
Adds Gordhan: “This is an agency brand with a storied history and incredible work, locally and globally. The opportunity to be part of that is both humbling and exciting. We love bringing ideas and storytelling together in new ways with media, tech and data. And it makes me itchy with anticipation thinking about how we can do that with this team.”
van der Merwe and Gordhan joined M&C Saatchi Group in 2019 as joint-executive creative directors. Prior to M&C Saatchi the pair were previously creative directors at Cummins&Partners Sydney and before that senior creatives at TBWA\Sydney. They have previously held roles at The Jupiter Drawing Room, DraftFCB Cape Town, TBWA/Hunt Lascaris, Fortune Promoseven Bahrain and Black River FC.
The team have worked on iconic campaigns such as Tourism Australia’s ‘MateSong’ (at M&C Saatchi) and Go Gentle Australia’s ‘Stop the Horror’ (at Cummins & Partners).
They have also played key roles benefiting the broader industry, with van Der Merwe serving two terms as national head of AWARD School helping to guide the next wave of creative talent in Australia, while Gordhan is one of the founders of #OnlyOneInTheRoom, launched to achieve more culturally diverse and inclusive advertising industry. Van der Merwe was the recipient of AdNews’ ‘Emerging Leader of the Year’, the B&T ‘Women in Media’ (Creative) Award and the B&T’s ‘Best of the Best Award’ in 2021.
68 Comments
Bad look for Dentsu
Congrats to all involved. Mandie and Avish are not only exceptionally talented, but they are bloody good humans too and that is wonderful for culture. 🙂
at dentsu?
What’s happening there?
Failure to launch by the looks of it
Congratulations Mandie & Avish!
11 months in is not a good look for the CCOs either.
Always has been. Always will be.
Throwing money at world-class creative talent won’t change that.
S&S, that’s a proper ad agency.
Go smash it.
Good to see Dave’s getting the band back together.
Yay Mandy and Avish!
A good move. Only 40 years too late.
Four years at M&C where ‘they worked on Tourism Australia’s Matesong’ campaign.
Um okay.
Mate, it’s cool, you were like the house cat here on CB for a while. But seriously, please let go and go make a sculpture or something. Try making jam…
Terrible look for the CCOs but clearly they weren’t doing anything if they’re happy to jump ship that quickly
Great move legends! Congratulations!
Saatchi, didn’t they used to be a great agency once?
Good luck guys, but the party wrapped up there a long time ago.
When you take a CCO gig, you are expected to transform the agency, not jump if it’s a bit hard.
Best of luck M&A, Saatchi won’t be any easier, make this one stick!
Saatchi is further gone than Clemenger. Because they were great once, doesn’t mean they’ll be great again. Maybe the second hardest job in market. Hope you can get it done.
That’s the point, it’s called an opportunity.
Very nice work Mandie & Avish
It’s tough when a CCO thinks they have the power to turn a business around single handedly. In this case there’s two of them but they’ve already proven Dentsu was an impossible task what about Saatchi? Nothings Impossible
If they thought Densu was hard, reviving long dead legacy brands is about as hard as it gets.
Best of luck guys. It will be tough but Saatchi should be a force again.
I think there will be more to this story. Expect some big news from Dentsu soon.
Sometimes you’re simply made an offer you can’t refuse. It’s no indictment on the people, or the agency.
Interesting. Maybe …..?
Two lovely humans, hope they kick ass on their new venture! 🙂
Perhaps more things to come in Melbourne. Says a good source.
Leaving after 11 months is not a good look. What work did they do in those 11 months? Dentsu hasn’t done anything well or good in years and clearly paying CCOs big fat salaries or the CEOs isn’t doing anything but making sure all the c-suite are kept in designer clothing.
I’m not sure there is really.
I don’t think it’s an indictment on the CCO team. Sometimes things just don’t work and it’s better to make a change. Life is too short.
At last a bit of common sense, this isn’t an exact science. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t like any other job. It’s an indictment on neither the agency or the CCOs, bet there will be a small queue forming to replace them.
Saatchies killin it at the moment. That last spot with the dancin people eatin snacks in the office was rad! be hard to lift the bar any higher but lesssgooo!!
Two of the best people ever, welcome.
It was no secret that they were struggling at Dentsu, which came with a lot of pressure for a first time ECD team. Maybe they needed to move on, were moved on? Guess we’ll know in the coming weeks.
They are better suited tucking in under Dave than going it alone in the big chair at Dentsu. This gig is much more their speed and Dave was their mentor anyway. Yes, it’s not a great look leaving in less than a year, but I get it for M&A.
Good to see a hold co invest in creativity and not just look at stripping cost efficiency from the creative department which is becoming the norm these days…
Will contributors stop declaring that people are ‘Legends’.
Why? They are.
Beyond the breathless PR release and relentless self promotion, there really isn’t any work to discuss. Which is a bit sad really.
Leaving Dentsu after only a 11months isn’t a good look for both parties. If Dentsu is going through a rebuild phase then logic says the leaders have to be committed to the journey. The comment “when S&S comes knocking ….” tells me there wasn’t a full commitment. The Dentsu team, especially the creatives have a right to feel jibbed. Especially thise who were hired under M&A.
On the other hand, maybe M&A were made promises that Dentsu didn’t fulfill. Maybe politics and old ways held them back.
Either way, it didn’t look good.
Hopefully it was a mutual decision.
What makes someone a legend here?
Same promise that were made to Fred.
And everyone else good and gone
Honestly, ad land is so caught up in what other people think. It’s their life, their career…. do what you want, who gives a flying feck what anyone else thinks
Wouldn’t want this one not to work.
I can’t speak for these guys or Dentsu, but I can speak to my own experience. Sometimes creative leaders aren’t given the reigns to do anything decent. It could be founder’s syndrome, an overbearing CEO, a creatively-frustrated planner, petty politics, a CFO giving you unworkable budgets for staff or production, blame-shifting from heads of departments or simply a culture of shit psychics, where everyone predicts what they think a client will buy (forget the audience!). It could be a ‘collaborative’ culture where nobody understands their role and therefore nobody does their job. In my case, I’ve seen all of the above. My advice to any creative leader going through just one of these things, who has raised it with the C-Suite and not been heard or supported – leave. You might think somehow you alone can make the difference, but you’ll probably just burn out trying. Best of luck Mandie and Avish, what a great opportunity.
So it’s everybody else’s fault that it didn’t work out, except the ‘creative leaders’.
I think every industry needs to get used to short-term tenures, including ours.
I know that Gen Z and some Millennials are more cutthroat and decisive about the places they work within for one very big reason. Life is too short.
If you’re not making inroads after 12 months in a role, leave and find somewhere that is going to work, or at least align with your strengths.
It does of course work both ways. Sometimes it’s the company not providing enough opportunity, and sometimes it’s the individual not living up to the task they have been given.
The comment about “when S&S come knocking” was probably not the best thing to say in the overall context of the short stay, however.
Not at all, but it takes all departments working together to make great work and my point was, there are some things even the toughest creative leaders can’t fix without c-suite support. Again, I can’t comment on the individual situation and nor would I want to. Best of luck to you.
Spot on.
Where is this magical agency that doesn’t tick any of the items on your non-negotiables list? In my experience, every agency has at least one – some several, a few all of the above. The lack of any sounds like a magical unicorn that I’m not sure exists.
Entirely correct, but you possibly deliberately missed the point. If you’re a creative leader and management aren’t working with you to make things better, you’ve got a very tough road ahead of you. Best of luck.
Good agencies seem to avoid most of this. Take W+K. BMF. There are many others.
Congrats Guys, You’ll no doubt kill it.
This happens all the time, yes it’s earlier than usual but the outcome of a mature conversation and mutual respect. Look at Stu Turner’s recent 8 months at Edge? Everyone will be ok, i’m sure.
Perhaps S&S have hired them because of the tender that’s coming up on Tourism Australia? Saatchi’s are hedging the regions bet’s on a hope that this duo might swing it for them based on their work at M&C.
According to @ Blame game, ‘even the toughest creative leaders can’t fix without C-Suite support’.
The flaw in that argument is that in this instance they WERE C-Suite themselves.It was part of their title as CCOs.
That first C stands for chief.
Just as it does in C-Suite.
And presumably their salaries were commensurate with that status.
A tenure of 11 months seems imprudent.
No need to get angry. C-suite support means everyone in the C-suite. If you’ve noticed, ‘Chief’ or formerly ‘Executive’ is often just a title, especially if you’re vetoed by the CEO, MD or founder.
Good people, good money, good work. You can get by on two of those.
Maybe they just saw the writing on the wall. Who knows. Who cares? Let’s get back to whinging about pale white men.
Sorry if I sounded angry.
I’m not.
I think your comment that something
‘is often just a title’ highlights the problem.
There are now too many titles ,too liberally distributed.
Many times they’re given by management to stave off a pay rise,appease egos or to retain talented personnel.
And the recipients don’t fully understand the responsibilities that come with their new title and what the expectations are.
CCO is one of the loftiest of those titles.
It requires resilience and long term commitment.
Which is why it is so incredibly well rewarded and the best ones are revered.
Agree wholeheartedly. And a CCO title rarely holds the weight it should. My original point was simply there are many reasons a CCO may not be able to change an agency, and if management aren’t supporting them in doing that, it’s best to leave. Sadly, often, the CCO is the whipping boy for everything going wrong with an agency without any department examining themselves as being – at least – part of the problem. All the best to you.
Good luck, M&A!
It’s easier to wear shoes than cover the world in carpet.
I’m nicking that.
I’m fairly sure we are not talking Millennials or Gen Z in this instance,so not an acceptable explanation for their decision.
No notable work delivered in 11 months, they may have seen the writing on the wall and made the exit before it was pushed from the other side.
Word on the street is another 2 year stayer is going to head up Dentsu in Melbourne. She’ll suit you perfectly Dentsu. Good luck to all..
Keen to see what the work looks like.
Better be good.
Hey guys…I’m here now…all the best Avish & Mandie