Soul founder Brown joins BBH as media supremo

Soul co-founder Kevin Brown is to join Bartle Bogle Hegarty in an effort to beef up the agency’s media capabilities. Brown, a former Starcom Motive media director, will work alongside BBH chairman Jim Carroll and is thought to be introducing a combined media model originated at Soul.

It is not clear what title Brown will be given at BBH.

Starcom was born out of BBH’s media department ten years ago. In 2003 Publicis bought out the last of BBH’s stake in the media agency.

Brown left Soul, now known as Nitro, after Chris Clarke’s global Nitro network took full control of the agency in June, in pursuit of an expansion programme in Europe. It had taken a stake in April. Managing director Duncan Bird also left Soul – itself a BBH breakaway – without a job to go to.

Brown founded the agency in 2000 with Duncan Bird, Andy Bird, Bruce Crouch and Seamus O’Farrell, all of BBH. They said that the agency’s structure would be unusual, with creative teams working alongside off- and online designers, communications account handler and planner, rather than being housed in separate departments.

Since leaving the agency, Brown has been linked with a number of roles at Naked Communications and within the Aegis group.

Neither Brown nor BBH were available for comment as Marketing Week went to press.

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