Saatchi slashes creative division

Saatchi & Saatchi has made 15 of its creative staff redundant just weeks after the agency walked away with seven awards at Cannes for creative work.

Saatchi & Saatchi has made 15 of its creative staff redundant just weeks after the agency walked away with seven awards at Cannes for creative work. The axe came down on the department at the end of last week, reducing its numbers from 82 to 67.

Two of those axed, Paul Schon and Maxine Fromaggi, were among Gold Award winners at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in June for their print executions on the Joint Israel Appeal account.

An agency insider says: “This comes out of nowhere for the staff here. One week we are the best agency in the world, and the next we are cutting deep into our talent.”

But joint chief executive Adam Crozier counters: “This has nothing to with cost cutting or any loss of business. Our creatives came to us after the Cannes awards and told us they wanted to restructure their department. It was a very brave move. The new department has no group heads and is more flexible.”

But the redundancies are the latest in a series of problems faced by Saatchi over the past 18 turbulent months. It slipped from first to fourth in the Register-MEAL billings league table two months ago (MW May 24) after income fell by 28 per cent last year. This followed the departure of Maurice Saatchi and the loss of accounts including British Airways, Gallaher Tobacco and Dixons.