The advertising industry has always been fond of executives who can survive the disappearance of their agencies, and Tyler Turnbull has now demonstrated that particular skill twice in rapid succession.

WPP has named Mr. Turnbull, who most recently led McCann for the newly combined Omnicom, as chief executive of WPP Creative, the holding company's consolidated creative operation. The appointment comes less than a year after FCB, the network Mr. Turnbull built into one of the industry's most decorated, was absorbed into Omnicom's post-merger restructuring.

Mr. Turnbull, a Canadian who began his career at Publicis during what was supposed to be a brief detour before law school, has spent the last decade accumulating the sort of turnaround credentials that make holding company executives reach for their checkbooks. He arrived at FCB Toronto in 2014, when the agency had just lost its three largest clients, and proceeded to rebuild it into a business that topped the World Creative Rankings, with FCB New York named the world's most-awarded agency in both 2025 and 2026.

"We were going to be a product company, not a service company," Mr. Turnbull told The Drum, describing the Toronto revival. "And our product was going to be really great work."

That philosophy — organizing an agency around creative output rather than client service rituals — will now meet WPP's ongoing efforts to consolidate its creative agencies into something more centrally managed. Mr. Turnbull has been notably skeptical of traditional agency hierarchies, describing decision-making structures that force approvals upward as creating "a sense of slowness. A quicksand."

(Whether WPP's leadership shares this view of quicksand remains to be seen.)

Mr. Turnbull has also been unusually candid about the gap between how agencies present themselves and how they actually operate. "Agencies are great at storytelling," he said in February, "but sometimes the narrative doesn't match the business reality." That observation proved somewhat prophetic when FCB ceased to exist at the height of its creative reputation.

He will remain based in Toronto, as he did while leading McCann, the quintessential New York agency. Some corner offices, apparently, are more about the title than the address.

Original story published in The Drum: "Who is WPP Creative’s new CEO? Tyler Turnbull in his own words | The Drum"