dentsu has confirmed jobs will be “affected” after sources informed Prolific North of a number of redundancies at director-level and above across Northern agencies.
The global marketing and advertising agency network, which has Northern bases across Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle, said it’s planning to reshape the business to “prepare for what’s next” in a statement to Prolific North.
We were unable to confirm how many roles, and which agencies, will be affected.
A spokesperson for dentsu UK&I said: “Our clients’ needs and ways of engaging with agency networks has changed. 2023 and our performance as a business has highlighted this.
“As we move into another dynamic year for brands, we need to further evolve and optimise the ways in which we partner to be more competitive, more adaptive and more effective in how we innovate and service the needs of our clients to return to positive growth.
“This means that there will be some existing roles affected as we reshape and right size our business to prepare for what’s next. Building on the solid momentum we have as One dentsu across the UK, we will continue to focus on client outcomes underpinned by great end-to-end experiences.”
As part of the ‘One dentsu’ simplified structure, dentsu UK’s chief operating officer Nnenna Ilomechina and chief technology officer Dominic Shine recently parted ways with dentsu. It marks a number of senior departures, including dentsu’s managing director of performance media Chris Howard, who recently announced in a LinkedIn post that he’s decided to leave the Manchester office, at the end of the year.
Earlier this year, dentsu moved into its new Manchester hub in Department at Enterprise City’s Bonded Warehouse. The relocation followed over 25 years on Portland Street, bringing together 800 staff across the network’s central teams and its agencies – including Carat, iProspect, dentsu X, Merkle and Dentsu Creative.
