Strategic changes at Lowe Bull

Matthew Bull will oversee the entire group as chairman, from where he will focus more on finding new opportunities for the agency and its affiliates, both locally and abroad. While he will remain based at the Lowe Bull offices in Cape Town, Bull will be concentrating on the overall strategy of the group, and will be stepping back from the day-to-day running of the business.

New group CEOs

This task will fall to the group's new CEOs. As of February 2009, Wayne Naidoo will become CEO of the Lowe Bull Group, managing the advertising arm of the business, while Marc Taback takes on the mantle of CEO of Initiative Media, handling the group's media arm.

Naidoo has been with Lowe Bull for 11 years, starting out in account management, and rising up through the roles of client service director and business development director, before taking on the management of the entire group for the past two years as group MD. He anticipates that his move to CEO will be an empowering one, both for himself and the company.

In the media portfolio, Marc Taback is currently MD of the South African office of one of the world's largest media companies, Initiative Media, which has offices in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. He has been with the Lowe Bull Group for seven years.

Expand even further

Bull explained that the changes being set in motion were necessary to allow the group to expand even further. “Lowe Bull is no longer a small creative shop, and requires a new level of management,” he said.

“The management team that was put in place some time ago, as part of the longer term planning strategy, is now ready to step up to the plate and lead the organisation forward, so that we can keep building on the successes of the group.”

These successes have been numerous in the past few years. The group was ranked the country's number one creative agency group 2007 by FinWeek; the agency itself has proved it is now more than just a local player, having handled worldwide accounts such as Coca-Cola, Nokia and Rama; and the Cape Town branch was named Cape Town Agency of the Year by ADreview 2008, with Johannesburg being named as a finalist for Agency of the Year.

Under Taback, Initiative Media SA has been transformed into a highly profitable concern. Current blue chip clients include Investec, Taste Holdings (Scooters Pizza, Maxi's and NWJ), SA Home Loans, Metropolitan, and a host of smaller clients. Initiative Media has also recently won the South African Breweries media account, worth R300 million.

Furthermore, the group has been expanding rapidly. In the past two years, it has started the below-the-line specialist Mick & Nick, as well as taken a stake in e-marketing and online strategic consultancy, longtail. In the last few months alone, the group opened up a Cape Town branch for strategic consultancy, OIL, and is helping launch a new design agency, Frank Wonderment, with more on the cards for 2009.