The announcement that an agency has given its chief creative officer more responsibility is one of those pieces of news that arrives with the regularity of the tides, and with approximately as much surprise.
Rethink, the independent Canadian agency that has built a reputation for work that tends to win awards and attract attention, has expanded the role of Mike Dubrick, who now oversees creative operations across the agency's offices. The move follows the pattern established by agencies of a certain size and ambition: consolidate creative leadership under a single figure, announce it with appropriate fanfare, and wait to see what the next round of pitches brings.
Mr. Dubrick, who has been with Rethink for some years, will now have his hand in work produced beyond his previous remit. The agency, which remains independent in an era when that word carries both pride and peril, has positioned the elevation as part of a broader effort to maintain creative consistency across geographies.
(Whether "expanded role" is a promotion, a reorganization, or simply a new way of describing what someone was already doing is a question that the industry has never quite resolved.)
Rethink has won its share of hardware at Cannes and elsewhere, the sort of track record that tends to precede announcements of exactly this kind. The agency's leadership appears to be betting that more centralized creative oversight will yield more of the same.
The announcement did not include details about what, specifically, will change in the agency's day-to-day operations, which is also typical. These things tend to reveal themselves over time, in the work, or in the next executive announcement, whichever comes first.
Original story published in adage.com: "Rethink’s Mike Dubrick on creativity and his expanded CCO role - Ad Age"