Grey London loses chairman and CCO Nils Leonard, its CEO and MD

Grey London’s three top executives have resigned.

Chairman and chief creative officer, Nils Leonard; chief executive officer, Lucy Jameson and managing director Natalie Graeme announced their resignations to “pursue their own interests”, the statement by David Patton chief executive officer of Grey EMEA said.

Those “interests” are believed to be setting up their own business. Leonard is also owner of Nils Leonard / Leonard Associates, a design, direction & experiences shop for global fashion & music based clients.

Nils Leonard

Grey was transformed under this triumvirate after the arrival of Leonard in 2007, from an underperforming agency into a creative powerhouse doing game-changing work like Volvo Lifepaint, which won two Grand Prix at Cannes in 2015. The agency also won 17 Lions at this year’s Cannes, for work that included HSBC’s Lift (directed by The Glue Society), Tate Britian and WildAid. It was Grey London was Campaign’s runner up Creative Agency of the Year in 2015 and the the most awarded agency at the 2016 D&AD Awards, winning 15 Pencils.

Leonard joined Grey London as creative director, was promoted to chief creative officer and became chairman in 2014. He as previously head of art & creative director at United (2 years), senior designer/art director at AMV BBDO (2 years) and head of art/design at Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe / Y&R (5 years).

Grey London’s new chief executive officer is Leo Rayman. Rayman joined the agency as head of planning in 2013 from adam& eve/DDB where he was the planning director. He was promoted to chief strategy officer in 2015.

“Having achieved such strategic successes, he has been ready to step up to the leadership role for some time,” Patton stated.

Vicky Maguire and Dominic Goldman will run the creative department as joint executive creative directors, with Perry Nightingale continuing as executive creative technology director.

Patton’s statement continued, “Grey London is in a very strong place. It has never had a deeper, more diverse bench of talent with strong creative, strategic planning and account leadership in place to fuel our momentum and break new ground, with culturally ambitious ideas and experiences across platforms.”

“While not wanting to trigger such events, we’ve long had succession plans in place so management transition will happen smoothly—as such, I’m very confident the new management team will be very well supported by all of the 450 employees at Grey London.”

Rayman added, “Grey’s culture is what makes us different, and it’s bigger than any one of us. We’re now going to accelerate the Grey project, strengthening our position as the most progressive creative firm in London, with brave culturally impactful work and acquisitions in tech and data.”

Lucy Jameson

Jameson joined the agency as chief strategy officer in 2012. She was promoted to chief executive in February 2015, when Chris Hirst joined Havas Creative Group to be chief executive of UK and Europe.