Andy Macaulay has stunned the Canadian ad industry with the announcement that he is leaving Roche Macaulay & Partners Advertising of Toronto at the end of this month to set up a new company that he describes as a ‘problem-solving consultancy.’

Macaulay, senior vice-president and director of strategic planning, joined Roche six months after the agency opened its doors and has been a major contributor to its success, proving to be the perfect strategic foil to Geoffrey Roche’s creative vision.

During its eight-year history, Roche Macaulay (which began as Geoffrey B. Roche & Partners) has been named Strategy’s Agency of the Year three times, most recently in 1998, and has won innumerable creative awards, in addition to several Cassies, which recognize business results.

The agency is among eight shops shortlisted by Advertising Age International for its Agency of the Year award, to be announced in the April 12 issue.

Roche Macaulay’s client roster includes the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency, Eaton’s, Harry Rosen, IKEA Germany, Mercedes-Benz Canada, Ralston Purina, Reebok Canada and Standard Broadcasting.

Geoffrey Roche, president and creative director, says Macaulay has been a major factor in the growth of the agency and, on a personal level, it’s going to be tough to deal with the fact that he’s no longer around.

‘Of course it will be a difficult transition,’ says Roche. ‘He’s been a great partner to me.’

Fortunately, Roche says, he’s had about six months to prepare the agency for Macaulay’s departure, which he has done by ensuring there is a strong, talented senior management team and senior planning department in place.

This includes Paul Howell, who joined the agency as vice-president, general manager in December, and Eric Blais, who signed on earlier this month after leaving Harrod & Mirlin/FCB.

Roche will also be working through the transition with the help of vice-president, associate creative director Graham Lee and chairman Ed Roncarelli.

Roche says Macaulay’s departure proves no one is indispensable and that if he himself were ever ‘hit by a bus’, the agency would continue.

While Macaulay admits that many are questioning his sanity at leaving ‘probably one of the best jobs in advertising in the country,’ he says the parting is amicable and that he’s simply moving on because, after seven-and-a-half years, there are other things he wants to do.

As Macaulay sees it, the best solution to a client’s marketing or communications problem often isn’t advertising. That’s why he stresses that his new company won’t be an advertising agency but a ‘solutions’ company that will do whatever it takes to solve the client’s problem, whether that means publishing a line of books or holding a massive party on the Internet.

‘I believe that, increasingly, there are lots of problems that clients have that don’t fit neatly into any one communications discipline,’ Macaulay says. ‘If you hand a traditional advertising agency a problem, they’ll try to solve it with advertising 99 times out of 100.’

Macaulay says he’ll soon be making more announcements about his new company, including its name, that of his two partners and the client he says has already signed with the firm.