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The announcement last week that agency boss Jim Kelly and creative director Robert Campbell, co-founders of WPP-owned agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R in 1993, have joined forces again to take over WPP Group's struggling London agency United caused some surprise in advertising circles.
The successful executives have taken charge of an agency that has few significant clients, recently lost a string of accounts and made zero profits last year. The shop is part of WPP's United micro- network of nine loosely aligned international offices, created after WPP's failed attempt to build previous incarnation Red Cell into a successful fourth network.
Yet managing partners Kelly and Campbell believe that the London agency can return to its 1990s heyday, when, as HHCL & Partners, its work for Tango, the AA and Ronseal ("It does exactly what it says on the tin") made it the most celebrated agency of the decade.