Brand Union axes London staff

The Brand Union has made high-level cuts to its London workforce, Design Week can reveal.

Simon Bailey, consultancy managing director in London, confirms that seven senior members of The Brand Union team in the capital have been made redundant. Those who have left include senior brand consultant Terry Moore, client services dir ector Philip Hodson, and Graham Freeman. Bailey adds the job cuts are ‘largely from client services and support roles’. Consultation periods finished at the end of March and the seven have now left the consultancy.

The ‘more challenging’ conditions facing the group at the end of last year and the beginning of this year are behind the redundancies, says Bailey. The WPP-backed group’s business strategy of ‘getting fit for purpose’ is also behind the cut-backs, adds Bailey. When former advertising boss Simon Bolton joined the group in 2006 as worldwide chief executive, he was charged with building the consultancy globally, parti cularly in the North American and Asian markets (DW 19 January 2006). When the group changed its name from Enterprise IG to The Brand Union last November, Bolton said the change heralded a wholescale relaunch.

Two other staff have been redeployed in the London office to roles that ‘service the global network as a whole’. The Brand Union has 21 offices worldwide and recently opened offices in Miami and Abu Dhabi.

Bolton says, ‘We needed a presence in Abu Dhabi as well as Dubai because opportunities have arisen there at the Tourist and Development Association alongside jobs that relate to the property business.’