WPP appoint Jon Steel to new worldwide role

8 Feb 2002

WPP announces the appointment of top account planner Jon Steel to a new worldwide consultancy position where he will interact with group companies and their clients. Steel will help WPP companies in developing client business and in helping clients with their strategic and creative development.

Widely regarded as one of the best planners in the world, Steel started his marketing career at London advertising agency Boase Massimi Pollitt as a strategic planner working on Sony, Courage, Foster's Lager and the National Dairy Council. At the age of 26 he was appointed to the BMP Board.

In 1989, he joined US agency, now called Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco as the agency's first Director of Strategic Planning. He worked on clients as diverse as Budweiser, the California Milk Processors, E*Trade, Hewlett-Packard, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, Nike, Pepsi International, Polaroid, Porsche, Sega of America and the Wall Street Journal. In his 10 years with the agency, he built up the planning department to be one of the largest and most influential in American advertising and the agency grew from $40 million in 1989 to $776 million in 2000. He was awarded a gold David Ogilvy Award for proving that research and creativity can walk hand in hand and no less than 11 gold Effie Awards from the American Marketing Association for advertising effectiveness. In 1994 he became Partner and in 1997 Vice Chairman of the agency.

Recognised publicly for his professional expertise, Steel has been named AdWeek's 'West Coast Executive of the Year', an Ad Age 'Agency Innovator' and he was inducted into the American Advertising Federation's Hall of Achievement for executives under 40.

As the author of Truth, Lies & Advertising (published by John Wiley, 1998), industry peers called him 'one of the great practitioners in advertising today' and "one of the top five account planners in the world". He is a regular speaker at industry events and at Universities, including the Stanford University School of Business and the University of California at Berkeley.