Hill & Knowlton New York Executive Vice President and General Manager Jeff Raleigh says the agency specifically looked for someone with a strong corporate background to smoothly straddle both sides of the equation in the Corporate Group position.
But while Wright's appointment is a highly visible example of the corporate-to-agency tango, industry watchers see it as part of a growing trend, with agencies more willing than ever to go outside the traditional route when filling key management positions.
Bob Ferrante, senior VP at headhunter Heyman Associates, recently placed a senior corporate PR executive who now runs a 60-person health care unit at a major agency. Despite having no agency experience, Ferrante says the executive possessed two key skills the agency wanted: knowing his industry inside out and superior people management skills.
"Because of the tremendous growth in the agency business in recent years, it has produced an explosion of demand on the people side," Ferrante says. "The needs have overruled the old hesitancies to bring in a corporate person; agencies always worried if they would be flexible enough, and there was a misconception they lacked an ability to deal at a fast pace. Notes Ferrante: "I'm not sure if there's a recession there will be the same openness on the part of agencies, but for now it's definitely there."