KEY POINTS:
The adman who made the "The End of the Affair" commercials featuring Mr Potato is leaving his executive creative role with Publicis Mojo to take up with rival Colenso BBDO.
The endearing ad features a saddened Mr Potato farewelling his girlfriend as she takes off with the wheat-based snack food Grain Waves. It won loads of awards.
And so it is that Nick Worthington is saying goodbye to Mojo.
Worthington is one of New Zealand's most lauded and highly paid admen and is understood to have picked up a pay packet of around $700,000.
During his four years as Auckland-based creative boss - a job essentially created for him - Worthington has overseen some of Mojo's best ads, including works for Diet Coke in Australia.
"Say Goodbye to the Potato" is evidence of his whimsical English humour.
The Harvey Keitel commercials he oversaw for Steinlager are also significant, as they mark a return to form for Steinlager and Lion Breweries after a series of reliably uninspired ads.
Mr Potato and Harvey Keitel are among Worthington's favourites, but he also mentions the Speight's campaign featuring the hotel being shipped around the world. I'll leave you to agree or disagree about that.
Anyway, Worthington said his decision to leave Publicis Mojo was out of loyalty and affection for the BBDO Group, the parent company for Colenso BBDO.
Before coming to New Zealand he was based for several years at Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO in London. He says his old bosses kept asking him when he was going to go back to Blighty but he liked New Zealand too much.
"Then it was announced that [Colenso BBDO executive creative director] Richard Maddocks was moving to head Clemenger BBDO in Sydney. It was the only opportunity I will have have to work with BBDO and stay in Auckland - it was a window of opportunity that only occurs every so often," he says.
Gone but not forgotten
Maddocks' departure to be head of Colenso's sister agency, Clemenger BBDO, in December will finally disperse a trio of advertising creative stars at Colenso BBDO who have been together since the late 90s and early 2000s.
That was when Maddocks and Toby Talbot worked under Mike O'Sullivan of "Mike O" as he is branded in adland.
Along with the rest of the Colenso creative team they produced some some astonishingly good advertising including the universally acclaimed "Being There" series for Air New Zealand.
Irishman O'Sullivan was the first to go, because of limits to his career at Colenso BBDO. He moved on to run the much bigger Clemenger BBDO agency in Melbourne. He says he left Clems because he did not fit with the Aussie advertising culture, which is extraordinarily blokey and aggressive compared to New Zealand.
Saatchi & Saatchi chief executive Andrew Stone installed Mike O to lead what has become a creative renaissance for Saatchi. Colenso was bereft for a while and the agency appointed Maddocks and Talbot as joint creative directors, partly because Talbot did not want to take the top job on his own.
Later O'Sullivan poached Talbot to join him at Saatchi & Saatchi and Maddocks was made top dog.
There is an old truism in the advertising world that a good creative advertising person does not necessarily make a good creative director/administrator, and there was a point when that seemed the case at Colenso. But Maddocks emerged with strong leadership skills and oversaw some brilliant ads - not least its superb debut campaign for Vodafone after winning the account last year. Vodafone global bosses are apparently very, very pleased.
Celebrity snapper exits
Norrie Montgomery has parted company with the Sunday-Star Times. Montgomery has made a name for himself as a "society" photographer attached to Bridget Saunders' social-cum-gossip pages and the About Town section of the SST available in Auckland.
Talk was he would take on a similar role with the social pages at the rival Herald on Sunday by Rachel Glucina, but that seems uncertain. Montgomery withdrew from the SST arrangement on Tuesday but declined to discuss the reasons. He said he held the intellectual property rights to the archive of photos he has taken. He has also embarked on a website venture thealist.co.nz featuring his photographs.
No Saatchi talks
Maddocks is chuffed by the move, which has inevitably caused a flurry of speculation in the advertising world. One suggestion was that he had been offered a role with Saatchi & Saatchi in Sydney and that Clemenger BBDO jumped in to offer the Sydney job so that he stayed within the group. Or so the rumour goes. Maddocks says that is nonsense and says that he has not spoken to Saatchi & Saatchi at all.
Pitching for SkyCity
We hear that Saatchi is putting an enormous amount of effort into winning the pitch for the SkyCity Entertainment advertising account, which is currently held by Colenso BBDO. And it has one of its biggest fans in the boardroom of the casino company.
The two agencies have traditionally been the big boys on the block. But the account is valuable and there is some history going back to last year when Saatchi & Saatchi and Colenso were both trying to win the Lotteries Commission business. Colenso wanted to try for this glamour account, but SkyCity said the two accounts were competitors for disposable spending - which seems questionable - and SkyCity could not have them both.
In any case, Lotto went to DDB Advertising, but Sky City was not impressed at being forsaken and put the account out to pitch. It is understood there are two other agencies, with TBWA Whybin one of them.
There are people inside SkyCity who will have the view Saatchi has the right stuff. Acting CEO Elmar Toime is a former chief executive of New Zealand Post, which was a Saatchi account. Company chairman Rod McGeoch has even closer ties. He is on the cross-Tasman advisory board for Saatchi & Saatchi aimed at building the company. SkyCity said that McGeoch would not play a part in the selection of its ad agency.
Sponsorship heaven
Is parliamentary Speaker Margaret Wilson going to end the sponsorship package made in heaven? After years of an arrangement where MPs and their chums have received sponsored trips for the Parliamentary Rugby Team, Prime Minister Helen Clark has questioned its future. "Dear Madam Speaker" she writes to Wilson this week. "I refer for your consideration a copy of an article in the Independent Financial Review of 19 September, 'Nice perks if you can get them'.
"The article raises issues around sponsorship for travel and activities by Members of Parliament, which you may wish to consider, and possibly discuss with party leaders or their representatives," she says. "Team sponsorship may also raise ethical questions that the Speaker may wish to consider."
Which pretty much means the deal is dog tucker as it stands. Yet, Parliamentary Rugby Team sponsorship has been going on for years, ably organised by Sky Television political lobbyist Tony O'Brien, paid for his time by Sky.
