Billington Cartmell has hired Ian Cruickshank, former managing partner at Draft FCB, as our new Head of Digital and Direct.
The appointment, which took effect at the beginning of June, reflects the importance that we place on the integration of direct and digital channels.
Cruickshank, 34, will help us build on our success in direct and digital over the past few years. Ian will head our data planning, direct marketing and digital marketing teams, ensuring that we maintain our leading edge in integrating direct and digital disciplines.
The move follows last summer’s appointment of Craig Lawrie from MRM Worldwide who continues as head of the digital department.
Founding partner Paul Cartmell explained: “Ian’s remit is to create and improve acquisition and retention for our clients, through specific CRM programmes in direct and digital channels. With increasing convergence between direct marketing and digital work, we need to make sure we have the top players on our team – and Ian is unquestionably one of the industry’s real stars.”
Before joining Draft in 2005, Cruickshank worked at Proximity and GGT. He said: “Billington Cartmell is not just incredibly successful, it has also built a genuinely open and receptive culture. That open-mindedness underscores the agency’s acknowledgement of the importance of digital and direct which is a serious principle, rather than the sort of bandwagon-jumping that is so evident in many of its competitors.
The integration of direct and digital is about getting a better cumulative effect by using multiple channels in an appropriate and engaging way. Billington Cartmell’s insights into today’s consumer give the agency an inbuilt understanding of the media people consume and the way we can use those media to get our message across.”
