Peter McPartlin is to step down as CEO of MediaCom Ireland after joining the GroupM agency two years ago. A highly respected and popular figure in adland, he has over 30 years’ experience in the industry, having worked at Dentsu Aegis agency Carat, Irish International and OMD Ireland. He consulted for Independent News & Media, UTV and The Irish Times.
McPartlin will leave the agency next week after committing to a two-year stay. He plans to take some time off and then start into a “few new ventures”. An official statement said that McPartlin had helped to “strengthen the agency’s overall service offering and enabled a successful transition of the agency’s trading and negotiation to GroupM Ireland”.
As the agency evolved, he took a step back at the end of last year. The new leadership team at MediaCom comprises Ian McGrath, managing director, Simon Kennett, chief client officer and Ed Ling, who is now chief growth and operations officer. McPartlin worked closely with them to ensure that his departure went as smoothly as possible, the statement added.
He was CEO of Communicorp Group’s national station, Today FM, for four years. His business and marketing expertise has been acknowledged at industry levels. He has led award-winning teams for three gold Marketing Institute AIM awards, won Marketing.ie magazine’s Agency of the Year three times and was presented with two IAPI Adfx awards.
He has served on IAPI committees and on research bodies for the TV, radio and OOH sectors. He was also a board member of the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI). Somewhat of a music aficiando, he was also CEO at Communicorp’s TXFM, which he helped rebrand from Phantom. In his early days in advertising, he worked at Dimension and Arks.
Just last month, MediaCom retained the Sky Ireland after a protracted review involving three agencies. The other two agencies in contention were Dentsu Aegis’s Carat and Core’s Zenith. Sky Ireland said the two companies will work together to set high standards for transparency and accountability across the media supply chain.
Sky began a media buying review last October after changes to Sky’s business, the media landscape and the media market since the last UK review in 2004. Prior to the new contract, Sky had been supported in the five reviewed territories by GroupM’s MediaCom and Mindshare, along with DAN’s iProspect. Sky Italia works with MEC and Simple Agency.
MediaCom is due to start working on the Sky account from July.
MediaCom’s other clients include Coca-Cola, Mars, Ryanair, Opel and DFS.
McPartlin is pictured at a seminar in The Irish Times with Aedamar Howlett, Coca-Cola
