Vickers & Benson, Genesis part ways

Vickers & Benson Companies Limited and Genesis Media have gone their separate ways as part of v&b’s restructuring process – a process that includes v&b setting up its own media company.

v&b has sold its 50% stake in Genesis to the Toronto-based media buying firm. All buying for v&b clients, as well as some of the staff working on those businesses, will move from Genesis to v&b by Dec. 1.

The as-yet-unnamed v&b media division is one of four wholly-owned subsidiary companies, each with its own president, reporting to John Hayter, chairman and ceo of vbcl.

‘Everything we’re doing is driving towards integration,’ says Hayter. ‘We’ve broken down the walls internally between the disciplines, and to have media in another location wasn’t delivering what we needed in that end of our product.

‘It was a tough decision because we’ve invested a lot of money into Genesis; it has been tremendously successful.’

The president of v&b’s new media company is rumored to be David Chung, senior vice-president, national media director for Lowe SMS, which is now part of Roche Macaulay & Partners.

Changes at the three other v&b companies have been announced.

Terry Bell, formerly co-creative director, has been named president of Vickers & Benson Advertising Bell’s partner and co-creative director, Larry Gordon, is taking over the creative director’s role.

Bell says he will continue to be involved creatively in the agency, particularly on mbanx, an interactive banking service recently launched by v&b client Bank of Montreal.

Among the casualties of the restructuring were Briony Wilson and Craig Cooper, members of the senior creative team.

Bell says Wilson and Cooper recently joined the agency from MacLaren McCann to lead the Bank of Montreal business but things didn’t work out.

‘Larry and I had more equity with the bank than we realized. When mbanx came about, there was a whole new strategy and launch and they turned to Larry and I to lead it.

‘Craig and Briony felt at this point in their careers, they would like to have some ownership on a business and felt it would probably not happen on the bank for some time.’

A new company, called One to One Communications, has been formed to operate V&B Direct, V&B Interactive and Southside Digital Communications.

Heather MacPherson, former vice-president of V&B Advertising, has been appointed president of One to One.

MacPherson was director of advertising at Unitel, now AT&T Canada, before joining v&b nearly three years ago.

The third company, Warwick & Associates, handles the public relations, public affairs, sales promotion and event marketing side of the business.

It is headed by Joe Warwick, president, who has also added to his responsibilities the company’s growing communications interests in China and South-East Asia.