There is a particular kind of retirement announcement in the advertising business — the kind where a founder steps back "gradually" over "the coming months," which in practice tends to mean something between a long goodbye and a slow fade to the elevator.

Adrian Coleman, who co-founded VCCP in London in 2002 alongside Charles Vallance, Rooney Carruthers and Ian Priest, will be the latest to make such an exit, with his departure from the agency scheduled for the end of 2026. Mr. Vallance, the agency's chairman, will become the last of the original four still at the shop.

Mr. Coleman ran VCCP as group chief executive for more than two decades, a tenure that took the agency from a British start-up with a single client — O2, the mobile carrier — to a network with offices across Europe, the United States and Asia. He stepped back from the chief executive role in 2024, when Michael Sugden and Julian Douglas were promoted to share the top job, and assumed the title of executive chairman, a position that often signals the beginning of the end. (Or at least the beginning of the gradual.)

"I have had the privilege to work with some of the most outstanding talent in the industry who have made it so much fun, it often hasn't felt like work at all," Mr. Coleman said in a statement, offering the sort of gracious valedictory that founders tend to give when they are, in fact, ready to go.

Mr. Vallance was more expansive in his praise, crediting his partner with building "the UK's leading agency" and noting that Mr. Coleman's "generosity of spirit" and "unerring belief in the power of teamwork" had shaped the agency's culture. Christopher Satterthwaite, the former chief executive of Chime, called Mr. Coleman "the most modest, yet brilliant agency founder I ever worked with."

Before starting VCCP, Mr. Coleman worked client-side and then joined HHCL in 1993, later running its sister agency AMD.

The leadership team that remains — Messrs. Sugden and Douglas, along with Stephanie Brimacombe and Andrew Peake — will continue in place, which is rather the point of a succession plan that has been unfolding for the better part of two years.

Twenty-five years is a long time to build something. Leaving it gradually seems about right.

Original story published in campaignlive.com: "VCCP co-founder Adrian Coleman retires | Campaign US"