James Bickford Joins Leo Burnett Consultancy as Managing Partner

Jarek Ziebinski, President, Leo Burnett Asia Pacific announced today the appointment of James Bickford as managing partner of Leo Burnett Consultancy. Charged with building a growth strategy for Leo Burnett Consultancy to become a regional leader in business to brand consultancy, Bickford was most recently in New Zealand where he launched Interbrand and led it to become a primary consultancy there. 

Aligned with Leo Burnett’s philosophy of people-focused communication, Leo Burnett Consultancy’s work will be inspired by the human purpose and will include a curated selection of Leo Burnett’s propriety suite of quantitative and qualitative tools. Leo Burnett Consultancy has been created to unleash the purpose of brands for the benefit of people and in doing so, accelerate, grow and create future value for the organisations it partners. 

Said Ziebinski, ”We learnt from marketers a key aspect of their communication needs lies in business to brand consultancy and made the strategic decision to realign our focus on developing the structure of a regional consultancy offering. An offering that is in reality, already in practice in a few of our markets across the region including Australia, Singapore, Thailand and Korea.” 

“In line with our ongoing commitment to evolve our business to reflect the changing communication needs of marketers today, Leo Burnett Consultancy not only enhances Leo Burnett’s existing capabilities in advertising and marketing but also brings the unique advantage of bridging the gap between business to brand consultancy and communication strategies to deliver greater value,” elaborated Ziebinski. 

Commenting on the appointment, Ziebinski added, “James’ successful track record in business to brand consultancy and most importantly, his collaborative work with agencies is an excellent match for this role, where we are seeking to not only add the brand consultancy specialty to our offering but also augment our overall strategic and planning strengths across the network through collaboration across projects and knowledge exchange.”