Our people

Brett Gosper

Chairman UK and Ireland Group and President EMEA

In May 2007, Brett Gosper was named President of McCann Erickson EMEA (Europe Middle-East, Africa), McCann’s largest operating region, spanning over 100 cities in over 85 countries.  At the same time he was appointed Chairman of McCann Erickson U.K. & Ireland Group, one of McCann’s core global markets.  Brett had been President of McCann Erickson USA since 2005, and earlier, from 2003 to 2004, had been General Manager of McCann’s flagship New York agency.
In addition to his U.S. posts, Brett has held high-profile positions in agencies in the U.K., Germany and France. These include Deputy Managing Director of BDDP (TBWA) in France, where he supervised the worldwide launch of the TAG Heuer watch brand and authored the worldwide concept “Don’t Crack Under Pressure.”  He later led that agency’s successful pitch for the BMW business in Germany and moved to Frankfurt to set up and run BDDP in that market. In 1994 Brett and his creative partner launched London’s Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper, an agency that dominated the new business charts for the next nine years.

Chris Macdonald

Chief Executive

Chris first joined advertising in 1990 working at DMB&B.  From there, Chris worked at both Lowe Howard-Spink and Publicis  in London on some of their most prestigious accounts including Vauxhall Motors and Coca-Cola, respectively. Chris went on to join RKCR/Y&R in 2000 as Managing Partner, responsible for about a third of the Agency’s Client list; including Virgin Mobile, News International’s The Times and Sunday Times and Cadbury Schweppes. He joined McCann in February 2005 as Client Services Director and was promoted to Managing Director later the same year. In these roles, Chris took management responsibility for a range of the agency’s key clients, including Xbox EMEA, American Airlines, Heinz, Mastercard UK and Intel EMEA. Chris was promoted to Chief Executive in January 2008.

Brian Fraser and Simon Learman

Executive Creative Directors

After both graduating with 1st Class Honours degrees from St Martin’s School of Art, Brian and Simon went on to spend the next 18 years working together at Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy and (BMP) DDB. They have created some of the best-loved advertising campaigns for Guinness, Volkswagen, Sony, Budweiser, Vodafone, Philips, Lucozade, Spillers and Reuters. Simon and Brian have won all the top industry awards, including Cannes, British Design & Art Direction, British Television Advertising Awards, Campaign Press and Poster and Creative Circle. They joined McCann London in 2004, and become Joint Executive Creative Directors in January 2006. Since then, they have driven the creative reputation of the agency to new heights with 2007 being McCann London‘s best ever year for awards. Simon and Brian have also been responsible for leading the agency to significant pitch wins including Heinz, Mr Kipling, Genworth Financial, Evening Standard, Premier Foods (Hovis, Bisto, Quorn, Cadbury Cakes) and Sony Ericsson. They are both married with kids. But not to each other.

Nikki Crumpton

Executive Planning Director

After studying Geography at Oxford, Nikki joined BMP/DDB where she quickly made her mark on the London advertising scene by being named as one of Campaign’s ‘Faces to Watch’ in 1997. Following this Nikki became a Founding Partner at Fallon where she was Head of Planning and as part of the management team was responsible for the strategic output of the agency. Nikki has worked across a broad range of consumer and business categories as well as the public sector. Clients have included the BBC, BT, Citibank, Starbucks, Nandos, Unilever, Unison and SC Johnson, with whom she has won a number of APG awards for planning and creativity. Nikki joined McCann Erickson in 2006 and was instrumental in the Mr. Kipling, Heinz and Evening Standard account wins.

Alex White

Chief Financial Officer

Alex started his career in the mid ‘80’s at Butler Dennis & Garland. In 1991 he moved to Y&R to become the European Finance Director of The Media Edge, where he built the Media network across the EMEA region, making key acquisitions and having a fundamental role in the acquisition of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe. He enjoyed five very successful years as CFO / COO before joining APCO, a Public Affairs company, as the European CFO.   Alex joined Grey Global Group in December 05 with a remit to drive top line growth at Grey London and across Grey's UK mar-coms companies including Joshua (integrated marketing specialist), GCI (PR), Geometry (brand design), and MDS Global Consulting (data analytics). Grey was acquired by WPP in this time and Alex was instrumental in the changes over the financial disciplines. Alex is married to Kim and has two teenage children, hence the grey hair. His prized possession is an annual season ticket to Southend United and he plays Bass and Trumpet badly.

Stephen Worley

Executive Head of Broadcast

Stephen joined WCRS’ production department in 1982 as a fresh faced 18 year old, before moving to JWT two years later, where he worked on various accounts, including Thomson Holidays, British Rail and NatWest. Stephen left JWT in 1988 to co-found his own production company, Swan Films, with the fashion photographer/director John Swannell, running the company as producer/MD, building ‘Swan’ into an award winning, five director outfit, with a reputation for discovering and nurturing new talent. In 1994 Stephen took on the role as partner and subsequently managing director of the well-established production company Rose Hackney Barber, staying for seven years and along the way producing commercials for clients such as Levis, Sony, Olivio, Pepsi, Coke, LloydsTSB and Weetabix, as well as launching 10 new directors and starting the video division RHB. After a three year sojourn running a motor racing company (an old passion) he returned to production with Partizan Midi Minuit in 2004, before joining McCann as Executive Head of Broadcast in 2006.

Mark Fallows

Director of Digital Content

Mark began his career working at The Leith Agency on Scotland’s number one account, Tennent’s Lager and later moved to BMP DDB London to lead their PG Tips and the Johnson & Johnson EMEA accounts.
Mark’s involvement with integrated and digital communications began in 1999 when he was hired by EURO RSCG to manage a core team of five specialist agencies across their Microsoft UK business.  Then in 2001 Mark joined Grey to establish a centralised, integrated communications unit for Grey’s Nokia, Oracle and Unisys clients. Whilst at Grey, Mark won pitches for Nokia’s global Enterprise Solutions business and Nokia’s Ngage mobile gaming device. He also initiated and directed two successful 360° integrated content campaigns.
In 2004 Mark joined TV production company FBC to produce branded content and focus on emerging digital platforms.
In 2006 Mark joined McCann working with planning, creative and production teams to develop strategically relevant, creatively led digital content ideas solutions.

Simon Hill

New Business Director

After a degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies it was only natural that Simon would find himself working in Australia. After two years in sports marketing, but by all accounts mostly surfing, Simon returned to the UK in 2002. Joining a small London advertising agency, Alphabet, he worked across their portfolio of clients.
Simon started at McCann Erickson in 2004 becoming Account Director on the Cereal Partners and Black & Decker accounts as well as chairing the agency training course, Blueprint. Simon has been New Business Director since February 2007.

Robin Price

Chief Operating Officer

After gaining a degree in law at Bristol University, Robin qualified as a chartered accountant with Arthur Young in London. Following a period working and travelling abroad he joined one of London’s leading video production and facility companies, Frontline Video, as finance director. A successful management buyout in conjunction with 3i led to Robin being appointed managing director.
In October 1987 he teamed up with four partners to found the advertising agency Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury.  Prior to its sale to Chime Communications Plc in 1997 HHCL received many accolades, most notably being voted the UK’s Agency of the Decade by ‘Campaign’ magazine in January 2000. In 1998 Robin moved across to the holding company where he sat on the main plc board as commercial director, with special responsibility for commercial and legal affairs, corporate governance and acquisitions.
In November 2003 Robin joined McCann Erickson as chief operating officer UK & Ireland and in December 2006 was named as one of adland’s most inspiring financial chief by Campaign magazine.

Vicky Oakes

Joint Head of Account Management

Vicky started in advertising at JWT.  After a move to Grey, followed by 18 months spent in Australia, she joined BDH (now BDH\TBWA). In 1996 Vicky joined GGT (now TBWA\London) to manage the Cadbury & KP Foods business.  Over seven years with the agency in London, she worked on a variety of accounts including Coca Cola, St Ivel and Blockbuster and won awards for work on Strongbow, Pretty Polly, Kew Gardens, Waterstones and Sony PlayStation. In May 2004, after a year spent in New Zealand running Sony PlayStation for Whybin\TBWA in Auckland, Vicky joined McCann Erickson London, taking responsibility for the Microsoft Xbox EMEA business.  She has also worked on Premier Foods, Coca-Cola, Fosters Wines, Refuge and has more recently run their Heinz business.

Charles Faircloth

Joint Head of Account Management

Charles began his career as a graduate trainee at WCRS in 1994. During his time there he worked on both Iceland Frozen Foods and BMW (UK) Ltd. In 1996 he joined JWT where, over the following 10 years, he worked across a wide variety of the world’s most famous brands including Barclays Bank, Kellogg’s, RAF, Rolex and HSBC. During his time at JWT, Charles gained his first on-line experience whilst launching the Hollinger Digital/ Boots collaboration on the women’s portal handbag.com. For a number of years he also held responsibility for training within the agency, and in 2002 he won two IPA Training Effectiveness awards. In 2006  Charles left JWT in order to head up the European interests of Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Leading teams in England, Spain and Germany, he headed up the Burger King business, delivering fully integrated solutions across a wide range of diverse touch-points, specifically created for each individual country. He joined McCann London at the start of September 2007 and, alongside his responsibilities on the MasterCard, American Airlines and Genworth accounts, Charles is also Joint Head of Account Management.