Ron Greene, president/CEO of Euro RSCG Devon Direct, resigned from the agency June 30 after a six-month extension of a three-year contract that expired in December.
A direct marketing veteran, Greene in 1983 founded Devon Direct Marketing & Advertising Inc., later selling the company to French-owned agency Euro RSCG Worldwide. He also held the agency’s top creative post, overseeing such accounts as Nextel, The Weekly Reader, Agilent and Volvo.
“It isn’t so much a question of what went wrong, but rather what wasn’t quite right,” Greene, who is based in Philadelphia, said. “The scale of a holding company model works against the entrepreneurial approach and creates unnecessary tension in a marketing environment that demands nimbleness, agility, flexibility and innovation every single day.
“While the ideal of integration looks great on paper,” Greene said, “the reality on the ground is that the sheer size of general agencies tends to overwhelm the other disciplines. Another factor is that there are different margins in different disciplines.”
He did not disclose details of his successor at Euro RSCG Devon Direct.
While Greene has departed his agency, he is not leaving direct marketing.
“One of the areas I’m seriously considering is agency search consulting as there are no real direct marketing specialists in the field,” Greene said. “Without question, all of advertising has come to recognize that targeted marketing programs for both prospecting and customer retention are increasingly central to success in the marketplace.”
