Ogilvy CCO Pete Case to depart

Ogilvy SA Chief Creative Officer Pete Case will leave the agency at the end of 2019. After five years at the helm, Case is taking a break from the industry, having previously grown his own market-leading agency, Gloo, and then merging it with Ogilvy in 2014.

Over the past five years, Pete has successfully helped Ogilvy evolve its creative product in line with the growth of today’s digitally enabled consumer. As part of this transformation, the business has restructured into a single P&L, allowing Ogilvy to create truly media-agnostic responses to business problems briefed by clients.

Case, who is part of Ogilvy’s global, 15-member Worldwide Creative Council, has led Ogilvy SA during one of its brightest periods. His tenure has seen the agency win 4 Grand Prix at Cannes, 5 consecutive Grand Prix at Loeries and an avalanche of over 600 awards for both creativity and effectiveness around the globe. Amongst these accolades, Ogilvy SA has topped the local creative rankings and been voted the most integrated agency by its peers – for five years in a row. During the same period, Ogilvy has also consistently been acknowledged by the public as producing some of the strongest advertising in South Africa, via Kantar’s Consumer Advertising Research rankings.

“There’s never a right time to leave Ogilvy,” said Case. “It’s a great place to work – with amazing people and a wonderful spread of clients. But after 30 years in advertising, I’ve decided it’s time to take a break and get involved in something new. I leave the creative product in the hugely capable hands of Tseliso Rangaka and Matt Barnes, alongside a deeply talented management team – so I have no doubt that the foundations that we’ve created together will stay strong. Our recent business wins are a signal of the strength in our team, our portfolio of work and our offering. I’m most proud of two things in my time here. Firstly, seeing so many great people grow, and secondly being part of so much amazing work that’s worked. Our Grand Prix at Apex last week underlines this. The Ogilvy belief in work that is highly creative, while also having a strong commercial impact, is embedded deep in the veins of our teams here. This will remain a strong differentiator that drives the business from strength to strength.”

During his time at Ogilvy, Case rose into the top 10 of the Gunn Report (now renamed the WARC report), which ranks the world’s best-performing CCOs.

“I’m proud that, as a team, we’ve managed to move both of our offices into the Ogilvy Top 20 creative rankings, out of more than 450 offices worldwide. This is an incredible acknowledgment of the teams’ dedication and the general standard of our work recently. I’d like to thank everyone at Ogilvy whom I’ve worked alongside for their passion and their belief in creativity. Also, thanks to our clients who have partnered on “out-of-the-ordinary” thinking with us. I joined an agency that was intent on redefining the future and I leave it still in the same exciting mindset. It’s been a huge privilege to be CCO of such an amazing company and I wish the business the best of success going forward.”

“Pete will be sorely missed across all the Ogilvy teams,” said Ogilvy SA CEO Alistair Mokoena. “He brought passion, energy and oodles of creativity to his role. Not only is he a great thinker but Pete’s also an incredible doer and finisher. Luckily, he has passed on those abilities to all the people he has worked with. Tseliso and Matt are perfectly equipped to assume the mantle as our creative leadership duo and we look forward to taking this legacy forward. Ogilvy remains well placed to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the modern marketing era, where creativity, data, technology and a creative culture coalesce into magic.”