The title of chief client partnership officer is one of those constructions that would have sounded like corporate satire a decade ago, before the agency business decided that "account management" had become somehow insufficient to describe the act of managing accounts.
Ammunition, an independent agency based in Atlanta, has hired Evan Levy, the former chief executive of Fitzco, to fill that newly created position. Mr. Levy will work to deepen the agency's relationships with its clients — positioning Ammunition, in the words of its founder, as a "strategic business partner" rather than, presumably, whatever the alternative to that might be.
(What, you were expecting them to say "tactical business acquaintance"?)
Mr. Levy will focus initially on domestic clients, working with Renaye Edwards, the agency's global chief operating officer, before eventually expanding his remit to international accounts. Jeremy Heilpern, Ammunition's founder and chief executive, told Adweek that hiring a former agency CEO represented "an impactful opportunity" — a phrase that suggests the impact in question is expected to be good, though the word does not technically require it.
The appointment reflects a broader pattern among independent agencies, which have increasingly sought to distinguish themselves from their holding-company competitors by emphasizing senior-level attention and what the industry has taken to calling partnership. Whether the clients in question experience this as meaningfully different from what they had before will, of course, depend on the clients.
Mr. Levy spent his previous tenure at Fitzco, the Atlanta agency that has been part of the Interpublic Group of Companies since its acquisition in 2000. His move to an independent shop suggests that the traffic between holding-company outposts and the agencies that define themselves against them continues to flow in both directions.
Ammunition has not disclosed which clients Mr. Levy will be deepening relationships with first.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Former Fitzco CEO Evan Levy Joins Ammunition to Deepen Client Relationships"