If you like to follow the ups and downs of Chicago ad agencies and the people who work in them, Lewis Lazare is your man. In this morning’s edition of the Chicago Sun Times, Lazare details the many twists in the road faced by GreenHouse Communications.
GreenHouse is perhaps best known as the shop that in April 2005, bought the remains of Campbell Mithun/Chicago. Sources say the Campbell-Mithun parent shop in Minneapolis was happy to unload the remnants of its Chicago shop on GreenHouse to avoid paying severance packages to more than 20 people, a cost-related issue of the sort that is now at least as important a focus at ad agencies as the actual business of making ads.
According to sources, nearly half the players who came over to GreenHouse from Campbell-Mithun have departed since the buyout over a year ago. And several clients that came over to GreenHouse from Campbell-Mithun have gone as well. Now Rust-Oleum is considering other options, too.
Tom Hayden, formerly of Chicago’s Bozell office and current GreenHouse’s president, will now step down and focus on strategic planning, according to Lazare’s report.
