Ex-CIA director takes senior Optimedia role

Greg Grimmer, former client service director at CIA MediaNetwork, is to join Optimedia as a managing partner working on business including Renault, Go and Tropicana.

The agency says Grimmer’s appointment is a result of Optimedia’s rapid growth in the UK, where billings increased by more than 25 per cent last year.

Grimmer, who has handled accounts such as Daewoo, Microsoft and Wrangler/Lee jeans, will work alongside Simon Matthews, Greg Turzynski, Mark Waugh and Philip Talbot.

Grimmer, who joined CIA in 1991, has been working temporarily at New PHD since he was made redundant last year in a cull of about 30 people, which included fellow CIA directors Richard Britton, Jackie Almeida and Edward Lloyd Barnes. It followed a number of heavyweight account losses, including the 110m BT account (MW October 22 1998).