Senior creatives leaving big shops to start boutique agencies

This NYT article about top-level creative talent leaving big agencies to start their own projects struck a chord here at Creative 303. Our CCO and founder John Meyer — who also bailed on a big shop to start Creative 303 — found it quite resonant. Excerpt below...there's also another great article on the same subject over at Ad Age. Enjoy!

Co:, with a colon, is the name of an agency being opened in New York by Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan, who surprised Madison Avenue in March by disclosing that they would leave their senior posts at the giant JWT for an entrepreneurial venture. The name — perhaps one of the pithiest for any agency — is meant to suggest the Co: business model by evoking words like co-creation, collaboration and co-venturing.

Fittingly, Mr. Montague and Ms. Ryan had been co-presidents of the North American operations of JWT, part of WPP; she arrived at the agency in 2004 and he joined a year later. Mr. Montague had also been chief creative officer for North America. They joined a lengthy list of top executives of large agencies who have recently left to open their own shops, take ownership stakes in smaller agencies or, in some instances, quit advertising.