Simon Waterfall leaves Poke

Waterfall is to wind down his day-to-day responsibilities as creative director over the next few months. It is understood that he does not have a job to go to.

All parties say the split is amicable. Waterfall says, ‘Poke will always be an amazing place to challenge yourself. It’s a company that at its heart, has an internal desire to “make it better”, think in new ways and push every brief and expectation.

‘I cherish this spirit and feel now is the time for me personally to challenge myself again, use some of my different skills from the range of creative disciplines and make myself sweat a bit. I don’t know what or where, but I know I have the energy to carry Poke’s attitude to different arenas.’

Fellow co-founders Iain Tate and Nicolas Roope are to take up roles as joint creative directors across the consultancy. In addition, Emma Pueyo, formerly of Groupo W in Barcelona, will be a creative director reporting to Tate and Roope.

Peter Beech, managing partner of Poke, says, ‘Simon’s a unique personality and we totally understand his desire to go beyond the digital space for fresh challenges. Simon immersed himself in D&AD [when he was president], and we could see that he was straining to move on, so this is really a formalising of that arrangement.

‘We love him dearly, we thank him for what he’s contributed to Poke and we wish him the very best for the future.’

Waterfall co-founded digital group Deepend as well as Poke, and served as president of D&AD in 2006.